Biological Compulsion
by wuogkat
Summary: Edward can't decide whether to love Bella or to kill her. He does lure her away from school during Biology class. Will Alice rescue her in time, or is Bella's sanity permanently compromised? B/E AU For Darkward In the Dark Contest.
1. Chapter 1 Biological Compulsion

**A/n This is a one shot, totally unrelated to anything else I currently have going. It's darker than my usual stuff so don't expect happy fluffy bunnies. Having said that, this is probably more like Diet Darkward, because let's face it I've never written Darkward before. **

**A huge round of thanks to XxenvyxX42 for reading this over and giving me some encouragement. You rock!**

**Twilight is the property of Stephanie Meyer. I'm not Stephanie. My name's Kat, it's nice to meet you.  
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**Enjoy. **

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**"In The Dark" Contest**

**Pen Name**: wuogkat**  
Title**: Biological Compulsion  
**Summary**: Edward can't decide whether to love Bella or to kill her. He does lure her away from school during Biology class. Will Alice rescue her in time, or is Bella's sanity permanently compromised?  
**Word Count**: 5,027

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I was hyper-aware of Edward Cullen's body next to mine. He was tense but it didn't feel like normal tension. I could taste and feel violence and sex and rage rolling off of him in waves. It made my heart beat faster and my breath falter in shaky bursts when I exhaled. His fingers white-knuckled the black lab table. The white against black of his slender fingers on the pitch-black industrial counter top looked like the keys on a piano. With fingers like that, he probably played.

Jessica Stanley ran through all of the dirty Forks gossip on his family at lunch. I wondered what she planned on saying about me. Thinking about the way that she swooped in like a vulture and passed judgment on the entire family made me feel protective toward him and his siblings. I wanted to get to know them and prove her wrong. Edward had obviously made a wise choice in rejecting the town gossip. She was outwardly pretty but inwardly repulsive. I silently applauded Edward's taste in women.

There was a bit more to it that that though. I hadn't spoken to this boy yet and I could feel his body next to me, like it was part of me. He was almost a missing appendage. I smiled at my possessive train of thought and blushed. I felt his eyes on me and shook my hair over my shoulder. He tensed up and I scrunched my eyebrows together in confusion. Why should he be more tense because I moved my hair between us? Maybe Mr. Banner had said something. I glanced up at the front of the classroom and sensed no change. I had to be imagining things.

Listening to Mr. Banner's lecture was already a lost cause. Fortunately, I recognized the material as something that I had learned years ago. It sounded like he was lecturing on cellular anatomy, but I had long since tuned him out. For the first time in my life, I decided to talk in class. I gave the classroom a furtive glance before turning my attention to the obviously tortured Edward Cullen beside me.

I pushed my hair back over my shoulder and turned my face to look at him. I found him mere inches away. His eyes were blacker than the counter, blacker than coal. I opened my mouth to exhale and he moved closer. Edward Cullen was close enough to kiss me, and I wanted him to kiss me. I recoiled at the thought. This wasn't a typical reaction for me to have with regard to an average teenage boy. However, something about Edward told me that he was no mere teenage boy. He exuded danger.

A hand made out of ice clamped firmly around the small of my back. I stopped breathing. Edward Cullen was touching me. He slid his hand up the back of my shirt and I jumped. He shocked me! His hand shocked me! Then, he growled and pulled away. He was still staring into my eyes but his expression softened slightly from the feral look he had been giving me. He cocked an eyebrow and I couldn't help but mirror him. A wicked smile crept across his face and his hand found it's way to my back again. He was less gentle this time, and part of me loved it.

My stool clattered to the floor but I wasn't paying attention to that. My attention was focused on the frighteningly sexy boy who held me between his legs while he sat on his lab stool. Both of his hands slid up my shirt and I hissed at the iciness and the electrical sensation. A loud breath escaped from my lungs and my head tilted into his shoulder.

"I need you," he growled into my ear.

"Mr. Cullen and Miss Swan!" My head shot up to look at the front of the classroom and warmth spread across my cheeks. Somehow I completely forgot that we were in a classroom surrounded by other students in the middle of a school day. My blush deepened into a shade of purple. Edward hissed and crushed my body closer to his. He smelled edible, like wild honey, wild honey made from lilacs. I groaned.

"This is a classroom, not your bedroom Mr. Cullen. I suggest that the two of you put some space between yourselves and head to the principle's office!" Mr. Banner held up two blue slips, blue notes. I had never received a blue note.

Edward's chest rumbled and he released my back. I didn't know that he held me a few inches off of the floor until my feet touched down. My knees buckled on impact and I was forced to grab his arms for support. Electricity arced between us again and he moved swiftly. Before I knew what happened, we were in the hall and he clutched the two slips of paper in one hand with my wrist clenched in his other.

"Let's finish this." He dragged me to the outer doors away from the office. I didn't know where we were going, and I didn't care.

The ice-cold air outside snapped me to my senses and I stopped walking. He pulled on my arm once and stopped. His body whirled around to face mine.

"The office is the other way," my teeth chattered but not entirely from the cold.

"We're not going to the office." He crumpled the slips of paper into on compact ball before dropping them on the ground.

"I need my jacket," I protested.

"No, you really don't."

"But..."

His free hand covered my mouth and he turned to look over his shoulder. "...And now we've been caught, you're going to pay for that," he whispered.

"Brother dear," a light chirpy voice sang from round the corner of the building. I followed Edward's gaze to the delicate looking pixie of a girl who was coming around the corner. "You don't want to do that."

"She's mine Alice." He placed himself between us. Alice, his sister, seemed very calm and non-threatening, unlike Edward.

"Do you remember Chief Swan?" She asked. "We don't have anything against him, do we? Look at what will happen to him if you do this to her."

"I don't care, she's mine," he reiterated.

"This is a mistake Edward."

"No! She belongs to me. She wants me!" He shifted slightly and scooped me up into his arms.

"Edward, we will fight you on this," she threatened and turned her head toward the school. "Emmett, Jasper, Rose, we have a situation. I'm near the woods with Edward, come now."

"I'm faster than all of you. You'll never catch me." We were gone before the words left his mouth. Wind and trees and leaves flew past us faster than I could recognize them and I clutched his shirt.

My mind reeled in a desperate attempt to make sense out of the past fifteen minutes. The inexplicably handsome, terrifyingly sexy, very dangerous Edward Cullen stared at me in the lunchroom, nearly made out with me in class, and then kidnapped me while his sister calmly argued with him. When I added the insane speed at which we were moving through the forest I knew that I had to be home in Phoenix in bed. There was no way that that could actually happen. I was too straight laced to kiss a guy in private, much less share an embrace with that kind of heat_ in class._ We hadn't even kissed but I couldn't imagine anything more intense. Hot guys didn't kidnap plain girls like myself, nor did they have to do so. However, the nail in the coffin was the speed. It was physically impossible for someone to move that fast.

My original assessment of Edward was correct; he was not an average high school boy. He wasn't human. I shivered without my coat in the wind and curled closer into his body only to find that it gave off no heat. My frozen skin was warmer than his. What had gotten into me? Where was my common sense? Where was my self-respect? Did I leave them in Phoenix?

"Stop," I pushed my hand into his chest.

"If we stop, they'll catch us," he growled.

"Why are they chasing us Edward?"

"They mean to stop me and I will not be stopped," his voice sent a chill through my body and the hair on my arms stood on end. I blinked back tears and tried to pull myself together.

"What are you going to do to me?" A tear slipped down my cheek. He groaned and stopped running. I found my feet on the ground. A breeze blew past and I was alone. My heart threatened to beat out of my chest and I couldn't breathe. I sunk to my knees on the mossy ground and sobbed. My heart felt like it would break and I couldn't explain it. Edward Cullen scared me but I didn't want him to leave. He must have done something to me; that was the only logical explanation for my complete lack of sense. I was ruined.

Eventually, I heard voices. One of them was adamant that I should be disposed of swiftly because I knew a secret. I wanted to tell them that I was safe, to bring him back, but I couldn't. Instead, I lay on the ground curled in the fetal position and prayed that he'd come back.

~*~*~

I woke up in a strange place. The smell of leather filled my nose and I opened my eyes to find white leather under my fingertips. I could hear the electrical charge of a TV set that was turned on but set to nothing. My arms pushed up from the smooth surface slowly and I craned my neck around to see where I was. The couch was definitely in someone's living room. I could hear voices and they were familiar. So, I held still and listened carefully.

"She needs to be home with her father." That voice was unfamiliar and carried kind of a motherly tone.

"We can't take her back, she'll talk," another female voice, the one that advocated getting rid of me earlier, argued.

"Do we know that she'll talk?" A deep bass voice buzzed.

"I don't think she will." I recognized that as Alice Cullen.

"We need Edward to read her mind so that we know she's not a threat." This one had a slight southern accent and had argued with the one who wanted to kill me in the woods.

I found myself unwillingly longing for Edward at the sound of his name. This was absolutely insane. I shook my head. He mentioned that Edward could read my mind. Blood rushed to my face. He must have thought that I was such an idiot if that were true. I spent what little of the class that we sat through thinking about him like some little girl with a crush on a celebrity.

"Well, that's not exactly possibly since Eddie-boy decided to cart her off as a snack or some such crap earlier, now is it?" Bass argued. "He's gone completely off the reservation, no pun intended."

What did he mean by a snack?

"If she's not going to reveal our secret then there's no reason to keep her here any longer." This was a third male voice, baritone. I needed to get out of there. There had to be a way to get to Edward.

"There's not a good option. If we send her home and keep watch we risk her telling our secret and if we keep her here Edward could come for her at any time. He can hear our thoughts and he knows how to get around Alice. She's not safe, we need to move her at least until this is over," Southern spoke up.

It sounded like I had a better chance of being found if I stayed at the Cullen house. I needed to convince them that I might tell Charlie that they were superhuman and creepy. If I could do that and wait long enough for him to come get me... I shook the thought back out of my head. What had he done to me?

"I think she's awake," Alice interjected.

"Why?" Baritone asked.

"Because she's plotting to get away. She wants to find him," Alice sighed.

"I say that we let him have her."

"Rosalie Lillian Hale!"

"Absolutely not!"

"It's likely that the child doesn't understand what's happening. Edward can be quite charming when he wants to be." Baritone defended me again but in a backhanded way. In my opinion, I wasn't a child.

"I'm just saying that if she's one of these shallow Forks girls who fawns all over him, then maybe we should just let him have her, chalk up his mistake and move on to greener pastures." That particular voice had to belong to Rosalie Hale, the blonde bombshell from Edward's lunch table.

"The two of you are really ticking her off." How the heck did Southern Accent know that?

"Well, if she's eavesdropping anyway, why don't we just go in there." Bass finally seemed to have a good idea because before I could blink there were six sets of eyes on me. They were identical dark eyes that were almost black with a hint of a warmer tone underneath.

Waking up in the Cullen living room and coming face to face with the entire family was disconcerting. They were all ethereally beautiful with pale skin and odd dark eyes. There was also something ever so slightly off about them. It took a moment it place it but none of them were moving. Jasper, the blonde boy that Jessica pointed out at lunch wasn't breathing. However, every single last one of them stared at me unblinkingly.

"Bella, I don't believe that we've been introduced properly," Alice started.

"You're Alice Cullen. These two are Jasper and Rosalie Hale, they're Mrs. Cullen's nice and nephew. Which leaves Emmett and Dr. Cullen. You and Jasper are together. Rosalie and Emmett are together, and Doctor and Mrs. Cullen are obviously together. For some reason Rosalie wants to kill me or in the very least leave me for Edward, which I'm not opposed to by the way, and one of you has a southern accent." I had no clue what I was saying. Something just rambled out of my mouth and I had no control over it. "Oh, and you and southern accent both have some sort of weird supernatural thing going on because you seem to know that I'm planning something better than I do and southern Accent seems to know what I'm feeling. Did I leave out any disturbing details other than the fact that I'm pretty sure that I can't live without your brother who apparently reads minds?"

No one moved.

"Yeah, I'd like to wake up now and discover that I never left my mom's house," I paused. "Any time know would be great."

"Welcome to the other side of the looking glass Dorothy." Emmett was Bass. I groaned at his tactless comment.

"She's observant, we should get rid of her." Rosalie's eyes narrowed.

"Stop it Rose. We are not going to kill an innocent child just because she had the misfortune to tempt Edward." The Doctor was Baritone. "How are you feeling?" He turned to me.

"Other than utterly confused, I'm fine." I sat up a bit straighter. "What are you people anyway?"

"I told you so... We should just let her go to him."

"Shut up Rose." Alice's temper flared and she barred her teeth at Rosalie.

"Girls!" Mrs. Cullen warned them.

"Look, you're obviously not human or in the very least not normal. Rosalie already wants to kill me. I don't get what the harm is in telling me the truth."

"Can you see where Edward is going?" Jasper turned to Alice and completely ignored me.

"No, I can't. He's purposely staying places that I can't identify easily. He's also oscillating between running for good and coming back for her."

"I thought that he was just thirsty. Shouldn't that have been solved by his little hunting trip earlier?" Emmett raised his eyebrows.

"There's definitely something more at play here. The thirst should have abated enough for him to come to his senses and stop plotting to get the girl." Doctor Cullen ran a pale hand through his blonde hair. "We're missing something."

"I have an idea, why don't we let him have the girl?" I suggested and was subsequently ignored, again.

"Okay, what is wrong with her?" Emmett glanced at me before turning to Jasper and Alice. "You did some research on her, didn't you? Is she not quite right in the head or something?"

"I think that it has something to do with Edward," Alice narrowed her eyes. "She's a straight A student, in the honors program, and there was no history of psychological illness in her files."

"Jasper?"

"She's smarter than this but there's some sort of connection between the two of them. I felt it during class before he went crazy and tried to carry her off like a caveman."

"Could someone please clue me in here?" I was very close to shouting. I was being discussed like I wasn't present, Alice and Jasper had apparently been off researching my life and here I sat stuck in the middle on a white leather couch. They chattered on for a second completely ignoring me, once again.

"Just wait one freaking minute!!!" I bellowed and they all got quiet. "I've been kidnapped and I'm evidently being held here against my will for my own good. You can't get away with this without my cooperation for very long because I'm the police chief's daughter. So, I would like to know exactly what the heck is going on here and what Edward intended to do with me? In addition to which what in God's name are you people?"

"It seems like a fair request," Mrs. Cullen lowered her eyes before glancing up at her husband. He took her hand and stroked it lovingly before he looked at me.

"I'm sorry that you've been dragged into this Bella," He started. "Let me begin with some introductions. You may call me Carlisle, and this is Esme, you seem to already know our _children. _We're not quite a _traditional_ family."

"That's obvious but it requires further explanation and I think that you owe it to me." I folded my arms like a petulant child.

"We think that Edward was going to kill you," Emmett blurted out and received a smack on his chest from Alice. I stopped breathing for a second. Did he really want to kill me?

"Bella, we don't think that he _wanted_ to kill you but that perhaps he couldn't help himself at the time," Jasper gently rubbed Alice's back while he spoke.

"I still don't understand. He didn't want to kill me but he was going to do it anyway? Is he some sort of sociopath?" I paused, "for goodness sakes what are you people?"

"We're vampires Bella." Every eye in the room turned to Alice. She had spoken quickly, like ripping off a band-aid but I caught what she said. It took a moment to sink in.

"Okay.... I'm going to go home and wait for the psychopath to kill me now. It's been fun. Really." I got up to leave and found my way instantly blocked in all directions even though I didn't see anyone move.

"Just settle down Bella so that we can talk about this..." Carlisle started.

"Vampires?" I started to panic but instantly felt calm. My breathing and heart rate evened out of their own accord.

"Do you want me to put her out?" Jasper turned to Carlisle.

"She's easier to deal with that way," Rosalie smirked.

"No, just take her to Edward's room and lock her in. She can't handle much more right now. So, let's give her some time to digest what's going on and we'll talk again later."

Emmett startled me by picking me up and flying up the stairs. I bounced on a firm black leather couch twice before I could steady myself. I looked up at Emmett, and he smiled at me. I really did need to wake up from this dream.

"Vampires?" I asked him. My hands had started to shake because this had to be a dream even though it didn't feel like one.

"Don't worry, you're safe. So far the only one of us who wants to drain you dry is Edward, and he'll come around eventually."

"This is not happening." I dropped my head into my hands and sighed heavily.

"I know it's some surreal and freaky stuff, but you'll get used to it." The couch lowered slightly under Emmett's weight.

"I think I need to be alone."

"I'll be downstairs with the others, if you need something just speak up." He was gone.

I checked the door and found that I had indeed been locked in. Something about the windows seemed to call me. They ran from floor to ceiling along an entire side of the room. My feet carried me over to them, slowly and carefully. It was starting to get dark out and neither Emmett nor I turned on the lights. Just as I reached the glass, I withdrew quickly in fear. There was something out there in the trees watching me but I couldn't make it out. I drew a deep breath and shivered.

I backed into the couch and stopped. I was just freaked out and cold. Nothing could be in those trees. Edward had to have some warm clothes. There was a door on the far wall away from the windows. I opened it and found a walk in closet. A deep black wool sweater stood out bout an inch from his other folded clothes on the shelf. I pulled it over my head quickly and returned to the window.

My fingers brushed the condensation on the glass. A white figure appeared on the other side. I jumped and nearly screamed but he put his finger to his lips. It was Edward. I took a deep breath and flattened my hand against his. We stood there, me on the inside and him balanced on the ledge, for several seconds before he slid the window open.

"They're not keeping you very safe," he barely whispered.

"Are you here to kill me?"

"I might be. I haven't decided." He moved closer to me. I could feel my skin scream to touch his. I took a step toward him.

"You're not going to hurt me." Two more steps…

"I might." He stepped closer. "I'm not safe."

"Maybe I don't want safe." I reached a hand out to him. My fingertips brushed his chest. He grabbed my hand and pulled me to him. I breathed him in and smiled. He came back for me. He wanted me.

"We need to leave now," he murmured into my ear. "They're going to be up the stairs in a second. Make your decision now."

"I made my decision when we left the biology classroom this morning." That was all the confirmation he needed.

He swept me up onto his back and jumped from the window. I gasped for breath when the air rushed past us. We were on the ground quickly and he ran. The wind whipped past us and I felt nausea growing in the pit of my stomach. I ducked my head into his shoulder and closed my eyes to ward off anything else. My hair flew out behind us like a dark curtain in the wind or a sail.

He ran for what seemed like an eternity before we came to a parking lot. He stopped and set me on my feet. My legs refused to hold my weight and I crashed into a car. I looked over at him and noticed that he did something fast with his hands. The car door opened and he put a hand on my hip to slide me inside. He was in the drivers seat when the passenger door clicked into place. My seatbelt was fastened before I could reach for it with my shaking fingers and the car hurled down the road at a sickeningly fast clip. Edward rolled down the windows and pressed his foot harder into the gas pedal.

~*~*~

I refused to allow myself to feel fear. Fear was something that I had given up when we jumped out the window. At least that's what I kept telling myself. In truth, I was terrified and excited. In seventeen years of life I had never done anything so impulsive and stupid. I ran away with a vampire.

We didn't talk. He barely breathed. The only discernible movement he made was the gentle turning of the steering wheel or a shift of his foot from the gas pedal to the brake.

The car ran out of gas and we abandoned it at a dingy service station off of I-90. I knew that we were on the other side of Seattle but other than that our location seemed to be the middle of nowhere. I followed Edward into the woods behind the station. We walked in silence for several minutes before he disappeared.

"What are you?" The chilling voice came from behind me. I held perfectly still in fear. I couldn't comprehend what he was asking or how to answer it. Instead, I tried not to breathe.

"Isabella Swan, I asked you a question. What are you?" He was closer this time.

"I- I don't know what you mean." My knees shook.

"You're a mystery." His breath was on the back of my neck and then gone. "Right now I find myself not liking mysteries. So you should give me some reason to keep you alive child." He appeared a few yards in front of me and casually leaned into a tree.

"How am I a mystery? I'm an average teenage girl." I cocked my head.

"You, Isabella Marie Swan, are anything but average. No one keeps secrets from me, not even my family. I can read everyone's thoughts save one person. Would you like to take a guess at to whom that is?" His lips curled into a sneer.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I whispered.

"Yours Bella... I can't read your thoughts. Couple that with the fact that I want to simultaneously kill and protect you, and I'm beginning to wonder if you're my own personal demon summoned from hell to torture me for the murders that I've committed." He pushed off of the tree and paced between it and another.

"I'm sorry, maybe I'm slow but I just don't understand."

He was in front of me in the blink of an eye. His body crushed mine into a tree. I panted and a whimper escaped from my lips. That terrifying, yet thrilling sensation worked it's way through my body. His skin was unnaturally cold but seemed to make heat bloom to the surface of mine.

"I mean that I want to drink from you but I also want to drink you in." He roughly pulled back his sweater and my shirt from my body before running his nose from my collarbone, up my neck, across my jaw, and behind my ear. "I want to kill you more than I've ever wanted to kill anyone. However, I want you alive so that I can make love to you." His cold breath caressed my ear and I felt like a string being pulled tight across empty space. "Does that clear things up, my dear young Miss Swan?"

"It does," I managed to pant a response.

"The fact that I can't hear your thoughts just makes you even more desirable and irritating," He growled into my ear. "I want to know what's going on in here." He touched my temple. "I want to know if me pressing you against this tree is having the same affect on you that it is on me. I want to know if anyone else has ever done this," he licked the rim of my ear, "so that I can kill him. I want you to be mine."

"I can answer some of those for you," I whimpered. His breath continued to flow across my ear; it made me tighten in unfamiliar ways. "I think I like you pressing me into this tree a bit too much to be entirely comfortable. So much so, that I can't catch my breath. No one else has ever done that to me, and I am inexplicably, permanently yours."

His mouth covered mine before my lips were finished moving and I didn't protest. There was nothing that would ever make me regret that moment. The tree scraped my back and his lips and body were freezing cold but I wanted more. I tucked my hands up his sides into his shirt and felt a vibration move through his body. I wrapped a leg up around his hip and jumped slightly without breaking contact to wrap the other. Heat coursed through my veins and up to the surface of my skin. He pulled his mouth back from mine and arched his neck with his face to the sky. When his head fell back down his mouth passed my lips and went straight to my neck. I gasped as he sucked the tender skin there and I cried out when his teeth sunk into flesh like a burning razor. It was my turn to look through the tree branches and into the dark black of the sky. The stars shone like tiny flecks of fiery glitter or embers in the dark. They were intense and so was the pressure on my neck. I became completely unraveled. He was either ending me or recreating me and I didn't care. I relished in the feel of him against me until it overtook everything else in the universe. I was his.


	2. Chapter 2 Translucent

**A/n Alright here it is, Chapter two. Twilight and all related characters and content belong to Stephenie Meyer. I'm not her.**

**Thanks to Knittingfynatyc for beta'ing, because I really need it! Without her, you would not be getting to read this story for a few more months.**

**Thanks to the ladies on Rav and all of my regular fanfic buddies (LJ, envy, KatMom ... ) for encouraging me to explore my dark side.**

**All I have to say is:**

**Please don't throw fruits and veggies at me. I wasn't going to continue this but the idea struck me and many of you are REALLY going to take issue with it.  
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My body tingled before I felt something fall and I went completely cold. Edward took several steps back. His face was a mask of horror. I cocked my head to the side before turning to look at the tree. I could no longer feel it scraping my back. I should have felt it when I moved my head. When I turned, my nose went through the tree. I jumped back a foot a stuck my arm out, it swiped clean through. I felt the slightest resistance and a strange sensation, but that was it. The tree wasn't solid.

"Edward," I panicked and spun to look behind me. He was on his knees sobbing violently. "Edward!" I yelled. "Some thing's wrong." I walked toward him and came to rest on my knees less than a foot away from his huddled form. He looked small and weak. "My arm just went through the tree. Did you see that? It went through the tree."

"I'm sorry," he sobbed. "I am so sorry. I didn't want to … I didn't mean …"

"Edward, what's wrong?" I reached out to comfort him and my hand slid eerily through his shoulder. I could vaguely feel the texture of his bones and joints. They slipped between my fingers like his body was made of some sort of Jell-O with bits of fruit floating in it.

He pulled his hand up and pointed a finger back at the tree. He trembled and the arm he held in the air shook violently. The murmured string of apologies continued. I turned to look where he was pointing. A mass of limbs and brown hair was slumped under the tree. It took a few moments for me to process what I was looking at. The girl looked familiar; - her clothes looked familiar, but something was off. I stood and walked to the tree. When I crouched next to her I felt Edward's horror rip through me. She was me. I was dead.

"You killed me," I whispered.

"I meant to stop. I swear …" He looked up at me and his eyes were red.

"You killed me!" My voice built into a shout. My head had lolled to one side when he dropped me. My neck was drenched in blood, and the sweater I took from his closet was ruined.

"I wasn't trying to kill you, Bella!" Edward sat up. He avoided looking at me or the corpse next to me.

"Really? Because I'm kind of without a body at the moment!" I gestured wildly at the corpse next to me. I caught a glimpse of my hand and noticed that I could see through it.

"I didn't want ..." He balled his hands into tight fists.

"You didn't want what? To deal with someone whose thoughts you couldn't hear? So, you killed me?" I sat next to my body and stared at him.

"It wasn't like that and you know it," his voice turned to ice.

"Really, what exactly was it like because the evidence here isn't making a very good case for you." I shook my head.

"You gave yourself to me," he growled. I flinched before I remembered that I was already dead.

"Yeah, because I didn't anticipate that you'd KILL ME!" I shot back. "I have a family, Edward! I _just_ got here. I _just_ moved in with my father! Do you have any clue what this will do to him? He's going to be crushed, Edward. In killing me, you may very well have killed him, too!" What was Charlie going to do? I hadn't even officially unpacked and I was already gone.

"For the last time, I didn't want to kill you." He bared his teeth menacingly.

"I don't have a body. What are you going to do? Sink your teeth into air?" I quipped.

His red eyes snapped to the side and then he looked at me like it was the first time he'd seen me. He stood swiftly and walked to my body. I shifted and crouched next to myself. Edward looked between my crouched form and the body inches away from me. He shook his head violently and tried to wipe the look of horror off of his face. He mumbled something about insanity before he looked directly at me.

"Bella, how are you in two places at once?"

"I'm not sure." I bit my lip. Psychologically I could feel my teeth sink into the soft skin but I knew that the sensation wasn't real. I desperately tried to reign in my anger. "I kind of hoped that you would answer that question."

"This isn't right. You shouldn't be here. You should be in heaven." He ran his fingers over his face and into his hair. "This isn't normal."

"What about today has been normal?" I rose to my feet and crossed my arms. "I was under the impression from your family that this isn't normal behavior for you …"

"No, it's not, but I've killed before and no one has ever still been," he gestured frantically at me and searched for the right word, " – _present _after death."

"I still can't believe that you killed me." I shook my head and stared in shock at my dead broken body.

"I'm a killer. Believe it," he moaned and twined his fingers back into his hair. The moonlight shone silver off of his white skin. "We have company. Alice will have seen what happened."

Edward was broken. He stood with his head hanging like a lost child. I wanted to hold him because killing me had hurt him. I was fairly certain that my emotional state would change, but in that moment, he was abusing himself so much more than I ever could.

"You have to know that I didn't want this," his voice broke. He reached a hand out and stroked the cheek of my corpse. It was an intimate gesture that even though it was directed at me, it felt like I was intruding on something between him and the dead girl on the ground.

"So, I guess that this is it," I whispered. I had an odd sense that I was crying. I reached up and felt my face. It felt wet even though I knew that there were no tears there.

"I'm sorry, Bella." Edward's eyes were sad and heartbreaking even with their crimson tint. "I really did feel something for you. I still do. I just wasn't strong enough." I felt like my heart was shattering even though it lay still in my chest several feet away from where I was standing.

"I'm going to leave you now," I choked on a sob and walked away.

I made it about twenty yards before I hit something that felt solid, like a wall. There was nothing there. At least, I couldn't see anything. I experimentally pushed against it and couldn't budge. So, I reached out a hand and felt along it. The invisible wall was a smooth curve. It took a long time but I came back to where I'd started.

I could see Edward the whole time. His family came to get him. Jasper and Alice reached him first. Alice joined him by my body and sobbed. Her small body shook with emotion. I could hear the wail clearly.

"She would have been my sister." Alice smoothed my hair and examined the bloody mess on my neck. She eyed Edward warily like she expected him to shatter into a million pieces at any moment. Jasper crouched between the two and looked like he didn't know which one to comfort.

I walked back to the small group and addressed Edward: "I can't leave."

"What do you mean you can't leave?" His head shot up.

"What are you-" Alice started to speak and Edward held up a hand to silence her.

"I mean that there's a great big invisible wall about twenty yards out and I can't get past it," I explained.

"There's a wall?" He blinked and jumped to his feet. "Can you show it to me?"

"Oh yeah, I'll show it to you." I folded my arms.

"Perhaps you're still somehow tied to your body?" He cocked an eyebrow.

"Edward-" Alice and Jasper both stared at him and tried to get his attention.

"What is he -" Jasper was silenced by Alice's arm on his shoulder before he could say more.

"Follow me." I gestured and he was at my side faster than I could blink. We walked to the spot where I found the wall and I stopped to reach out and touch it. There was nothing there. He cocked an eyebrow at me and I shrugged. "I swear that just a minute ago, I couldn't go past this tree." I pushed my hand into the trunk and watched it disappear. It was a very odd sensation. When I kept my hand in for a few moments, I could feel all of the branches.

"Try walking," he suggested. I walked in a straight line for another twenty yards and was promptly stopped again.

"Here it is again!" I threw my hands in the air and gestured at it. "It's a huge wall and it's in my way." I put a hand on it and suddenly it moved. I took another step forward. It seemed to move step by step away from me. I turned to find Edward still standing around twenty yards away but in a different place. "Don't tell me ..."

"I'm afraid that it might be true," he grimaced.

"I can't go more than twenty yards from you!" I screamed.

"It would appear so ..."

"Oh, that's just rich! You kill me and you trap me! Where is that fair?" I threw my hands in the air. "This can't be happening. I'm still asleep."

"I don't know what's going on either!" He spat. Alice and Jasper rose at the noise and approached Edward slowly. They hung back by about ten feet.

"It's your world that I'm stuck in! You should know _something_ about it!" I seethed.

"This has _never_ happened before," he said through clenched teeth. "I don't know any more than you do. Stop blaming me for this because I don't know what's happening." The couple behind him exchanged a worried glance.

"Well, you're going to find out." I pointed a translucent finger at him.

"How do you know that it's my fault? Maybe it's yours. I've never run into a human like you before."

"You did not just blame me for my own death!"

"Ugh! That's not what I meant and you know it!" He pinched the bridge of his nose.

"That's certainly what it sounded like.-"

"Well, maybe you should pay closer attention. Perhaps if you had none of this would have happened."

"Okay, now _that_ was definitely blaming this situation on me." I narrowed my eyes at him.

"Alice is thinking about how they warned you, and you came with me willingly anyway," he accused. "She also thinks that I'm insane but that's beside the point."

"Just what are you-"

"No, Bella," he cut me off again. "Perhaps if you hadn't been so obsessed and willing to walk right into danger, _perhaps _if you possessed some semblance of a self preservation instinct -"

"What? Do you think that I meet and chase after vampires on a daily basis?"

"Well, you we sure willing to get close to me in biology." He stalked toward me.

"That was-"

"Stop talking, now," he growled. "It's my turn. The other humans stay away from us. They sense that there's something wrong but not you. - " He came closer. "You didn't even question me."

"Because I trusted you. Because I lo-" I clamped my mouth shut. That was one sentence that I was not going to finish. The rest of his family reached my corpse. Rosalie, Emmett, and Carlisle stopped.

"What was that, Bella?" He cocked his head to the side and came dangerously close to my personal space. Esme approached Edward from behind.

"I said that I trusted you," I murmured. There was no way that I was going to be a silly teenage girl and tell him I loved him without ever really knowing him. It felt true. I could feel the emotion stirring in my chest even without a beating heart. However, that was not something that Edward Cullen needed to know.

"Fine." He looked crestfallen. Had he known what I was going to say? Did he want me to say it? Even dead he turned my life upside down and twisted everything until it was unrecognizable.

"Edward, are you talking to someone?" Esme Cullen took her son's hand.

"Yeah, Bella. She's trapped," he answered. Esme's face fell.

"Rosalie and Emmett will take care of her body. You need to go home," Esme breathed the words out and rubbed Edward's back. He nodded and followed her out of the woods to a black Mercedes. I had no choice but to follow or let the wall drag me along.

"Edward, you have to figure out a way to separate us!" I shouted at him. "This is your fault. You have to fix this!" I positioned myself so that he had to look at me and walked backwards with a surprising amount of grace. "Edward?"

He refused to acknowledge me. I passed my fist through several trees in rage as they went by me. He stared straight ahead and leaned slightly on Esme. She soothed him like he was a small child while they walked. The action ticked me off. He killed me, and she was comforting him.

I floated over the trunk of the car and pretended to sit on it on the drive back to the Cullen house. There had to be a way out of this. I couldn't be hopelessly tied to my murderer. That would be cruel. The fact that I loved him was even worse. How was I going to deal with being stuck with someone whom I simultaneously loved and hated? Nothingness would have been a more appealing option. Had I done something terribly wrong? Was this what hell was actually like? No burning or fire, no lava, no devil with a pitchfork, but Edward Cullen, my gorgeous murderer, within twenty yards at all times.

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**A/n I'm going to go hide under a garbage bag like I'm at a Gallagher show now ... **

**Updates will be slow. I make no promises as to how often I'll get them posted.**


	3. Chapter 3 Connected

**A/n 'Tis the season for delays. I love y'all and your reviews.**

**Beta'd by Knittingfynatyc / KnittingVamp7 (She writes, when you get annoyed with my slow updates you should go read her stuff.)**

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I had no desire for company at that moment, human or vampire. Instead, I sat on the trunk and stewed for the entire trip. I was dead, really dead, dead as a doornail and yet, still alive. What was it that Edward had called it? Present? I was most definitely _present_. The question was, why? Why was I present, and why did Edward kill me in the first place?

The interstate buzzing past me did nothing to prevent my musing. I watched the cars pass by with little interest and continued to focus on my situation. I felt a bit cheated as far as death was concerned. Wasn't I supposed to be floating on a cloud with a harp and a set of wings? What had I done wrong to deserve being tethered to the enigmatic Edward Cullen?

The car pulled off into a forest along the way, and all of the car's occupants exited. Edward trudged alongside Esme and I desperately tried to remain seated on top of the trunk. The universe had other plans. I found myself pulled behind Edward. My feet met no resistance from the ground and the debris on the forest floor tickled as it slipped through my body. I didn't talk to Edward. He looked at me over his shoulder once but didn't seem keen to speak with me. His eyes were still red from my blood but they were also sad.

I steeled myself up to remain angry with him. This should be uncomfortable for him. This should hurt. He stole my life.

_But _you_ gave it, _the voice in the back of my head chided.

I _had_ given it, but I wasn't in control of my faculties at the time. Had I been thinking about the situation, had I been rational, I wouldn't have done it. I would have screamed - or fought. I would have stayed away in the first place. However, who could fight the pull of Edward Cullen the Greek God descended to Earth? He had done something to me and my will abandoned me. He took away rationality and thought and left a mess of mushy girl goo that I didn't recognize as Bella Swan.

I hated him. My mind was made up; I would continue to hate him as long as we were tethered like this. Even after I found a way to free myself, if I found a way to free myself, I wasn't sure that I'd forgive him. He was a murderer.

"Edward," Esme's voice broke my thoughts just as I was beginning to ponder the difficulties of vampire mutilation. They halted and stood between the trees. "Edward, you need to hunt. Alice says that Chief Swan will be at the house when we get there and your eyes are red. The blood needs to be diluted." Edward shook his head and sighed.

"It's true," Alice piped up. "You need to feed before we get there."

"I'm not thirsty."

"Edward-"

"No, Alice!" he snapped at her. Jasper stepped between them.

"Son," Carlisle hummed softly in a fatherly tone and clapped a hand on his shoulder. "You can't take it back. You can only hope to repent and move forward from your mistakes."

"I killed an innocent girl today," he whispered in response. "I deserve to be discovered."

They looked at each other for a few moments and Edward eventually nodded. I clicked my tongue behind my teeth at the silent conversation. Edward did deserve to be discovered. I didn't like the way their wordless exchanged seemed to be headed. Edward nodded again and ran his fingers through his hair.

He had nice hair. I squashed the errant thought.

"To protect her family, but that's the only reason," the jerk acquiesced. I growled at him and his head snapped up to look at me. He was pleading with me not to make him speak. I don't know why I didn't press him, but I didn't. I allowed him some peace and quiet.

"Can I have some space? I won't go far."

The other four vampires backed up at the request. Edward took off. I lifted my feet off the ground and attempted to float behind him. I sailed behind him like he was a child and I was a kite being pulled by the string of our connection. I had to work to remain upset. The thought of being a human kite was amusing.

"We're out of ear-shot." He came to a stop and I allowed myself to float in front of him. "I'm doing this for Chief Swan. There are those who would kill me but also him if he were to know our secret." He took a deep breath and gave me an appraising look. "You're going to have to hunt with me." He grimaced. I refused to respond and looked at my fingers in the dark.

"Let's go." He took off again. I tagged along behind as he shifted between trees and jumped obstacles that I merely slid through. He was rather graceful.

I tried not to watch the smooth movement of his muscles under his shirt while he ran or the determination that he exhibited when he smelled his prey. His head whipped up and he slowed from a run into a stalk. The transition was smooth and beautiful.

A herd of deer came into view and he leapt into the air, causing me to fly along with him. We were airborne for mere moments before touching down in the middle of the herd. He was blindingly fast. His teeth sunk into the neck of one of the creatures and he fed with thick, greedy gulps.

When he finished, he stood and turned to me, seemingly ashamed. I carefully appraised his appearance. He was unruffled. There wasn't a spot of blood to be found on him. I hadn't realized that before. My body had been covered in blood but somehow he managed to stay perfectly tidy. He brought his eyes up slowly to meet mine. The red was diluted to a more civilized, yet unnatural, shade of ocher.

For a moment, when our eyes met, I thought that I couldn't breathe. I forgot that breathing was unnecessary. The world shifted on it's axis and revolved around the air between us. I stepped in closer to him and he followed suit but as soon as all of the space was eliminated we were rather blatantly reminded of my non corporeal form. His hand slipped though my body and I jumped back. His hand produced a sensation not unlike static electricity only it was inside my non corporeal body. I tried the same with him and he jumped.

"You're cold," he exclaimed.

"You shocked me," I countered before I groaned in frustration.

"So, the draw between us didn't fade with your death," he smirked. I backed up. The moment was officially over. "Bella ..." He advanced on me and I backed away.

"There you are!" A shout came from the surrounding woods. Alice bounded into view and grabbed Edward by the face. She pulled down until his eyes were forced to meet hers. "They're not great but it'll have to work," she sighed. "He's going to question you outside, in the dark, anyway." She blinked a few times, and searched, before continuing, "No, he won't notice. The red would have been obvious but this isn't so bad."

The sprite dragged him off in the direction of the car. They were walking back rather than running. I made an attempt to follow along and pretended to use my feet because it felt more natural, more human, than floating.

"What am I going to say to him?" Edward sounded weary.

"You're going to have to pretend like you don't know what happened," Alice spoke gently and looked up at him from the corner of her eye. "I think that it might be best if we came up with a cohesive story rather than letting you wing it this time around."

"I can still hear your thoughts, Alice. I'm not unbalanced."

"Then what would you call it, brother dear?" Alice sounded unnaturally chipper to be having this particular conversation.

"I don't know," Edward attempted to be evasive.

"Who were you talking to?" Alice wasn't going to put up with evasive.

"Bella." He simply offered the truth.

"Bella?" Alice quirked an eyebrow and shook her head.

"No, Alice, she's still here," he answered her unspoken question.

She stopped walking and gave him a long, hard look. Edward halted and glared at her. Her expression softened. The two stood together like that for a moment. Edwards head and eyes gave slight movements before he ultimately shrugged.

"Vampires don't experience schizophrenia," he chided.

"There's a first time for everything," Alice mumbled. The two resumed walking; I attempted to walk backwards in front of them.

"Would you like to explain the silent conversation, Edward?" I asked.

He attempted to look casual and shook his head. He managed to give off an air that he wasn't responding to me but that he was shaking off an errant thought. His ability to deceive astounded me. However, it didn't astound Alice.

"So, is she here now?"

"Yes. She can't go more than twenty yards away from me."

"Should I be talking to her rather than you?" Alice poked him in the shoulder and Edward rubbed the spot. From her tone, I could discern that she didn't believe a word that he was saying.

"I don't want to talk to her." I spat and folded my arms and fell back into step next to Edward.

"I'm sorry. She doesn't feel like talking to you," Edward apologized.

"Don't do that," I spat. "Don't apologize to her. She doesn't believe that I exist."

"I can hardly blame her for that, Bella." He tried not to be heard.

"Does _Bella_ have something to say to me?" Alice made a better attempt at sounding like she believe Edward but her disbelief was palpable.

"_Bella_, is being irrational," he accused. "She feels that you should believe in her existence without any form of proof."

"You are a few cards short of a deck," Alice breathed. "The story. We need to work on it."

"I left her in the woods?" Edward suggested.

"On the trail," Alice added. "You need to act upset, too. Especially after the PDA that the _two of you_," she indicated a spot as if I was standing there, "displayed in Biology."

"Why would I leave her, though?"

"I don't know. Bella, do you have any suggestions?" Alice asked the empty space that she had indicated before.

"She's not imaginary, Alice, and she's over there." Edward pointed at me.

"Why are you even bothering, Edward? She's never going to believe you," I hummed.

"Because pretending not to see you won't help."

"Are you done? This has ceased being funny," Alice snapped.

"I told you so," I sang.

"What if she just wanted to go home and I wanted to keep hiking?" Edward looked at me and then Alice.

I nodded.

"Will Chief Swan buy that?"

"Bella?" Edward looked at me again.

"I suppose so, I'm not much of a sports enthusiast and I'm clumsy. So, he should believe it."

"Then that's the plan. I suppose that the rest of the alibi has been arranged?"

"We went to Seattle. Emmett is arranging for video of us to appear on a security camera to cement it." Alice shook her head. "I never thought that we'd have to do this for you, Edward."

"Neither did I," he sighed.

The rest of the walk was silent. Alice didn't speak to Edward and he refused to acknowledge my existence. When we reached the car I resumed my perch on the trunk. I leaned back onto the rear windshield and stared at the stars all the way to the Cullen's driveway.

We pulled into the drive and were greeted by the lights on Charlie's cruiser. Charlie was technically breaking the rules; I hadn't been missing nearly long enough to start an investigation. I jumped of of the car while it was still in motion and tried to run to him but the wall stopped me. I was two inches shy of being able to hug him. The Cullens had pulled into the garage and I had to wait for Edward to get out and move closer before I could even try to touch Charlie. My death would be hard on him.

I dropped to the ground and sobbed. This wasn't what I wanted to happen. I just wanted to give Renee some space to be with Phil and I had blown everything. Now Charlie was alone, possibly more alone than he would have been had I never come at all. He wouldn't even have summer vacation or the odd school picture. I was gone.

I heard footsteps.

"Dr. Cullen," Charlie dipped his head slightly and greeted the vampire behind me.

"How can I help you this evening, Chief Swan?"

"I wanted a word with your son, Edward." Charlie's arms were crossed.

"Edward?" Carlisle came into view. "Has he done something wrong?"

"No, my daughter is missing and it seems that he was the last to see her," Charlie's voice was strained but not angry.

"Really?" Carlisle could sell a lie like no one else. I almost believed that he was shocked.

"I was hoping that maybe she was with your family. Did she come home with him his afternoon?"

"No, I can't say that I've ever met her," Carlisle paused and curved his hand around his chin. "He did mention meeting a girl today, Isabelle?" The doctor was shameless. He successfully feigned not knowing my name when the whole town had to have been buzzing about my arrival.

"Isabella," Charlie corrected.

"Bella?" Edward spoke as he approached. "What's wrong with her? Is she alright?" The words tumbled over each other on the way out of his mouth.

"I hoped that you'd be able to answer that, son." Charlie turned to face Edward.

"We got kicked out of Biology and decided to take a walk in the woods near the school," He managed to sound like a shocked kid. "Didn't she come home?"

"No, she hasn't been home."

"She said that hiking wasn't her thing and she wanted to head back after we'd gone about a mile." I spared a glance at Edward and noticed that his face was completely open and honest. He and Carlisle were possibly the best liars that I'd ever encountered.

"Edward, you left her in the woods," Carlisle chided and turned toward Edward.

"She told me to go on and we were right on the trail ..." He held his hands palm up. His face didn't twitch and give him away the way that mine would have. "She didn't want to inconvenience me."

"Well played Edward," I murmured without hiding my disgust. Edward didn't even flinch.

"Well, thank you, son. I'm going to head out that way and look for her."

"Do you need help?" Edward offered. "I really thought that she was okay to get home back by herself-"

"I think you've done enough, Edward," Carlisle interrupted. "Jasper would be willing to help though. He's an experienced hiker."

"No, you and your boys look like you've had a long day. I have some friends from La Push who will come out and help me look." Charlie turned to his cruiser. "By the way where were you just coming from?"

"Oh, we went to the mall in Seattle as soon as the kids got in this afternoon," Carlisle explained. "Alice wanted to go shopping. Emmett and Rosalie are still on the way home. They stopped for dinner."

Dinner, indeed ... That was a fine euphemism for ditching my body.

"Well, you have a good night then," Charlie sounded disappointed as he swung his door open.

"Chief Swan," Carlisle called and Charlie paused on his way into the car. "Page me if you find her. It's late and she's been out for a while. She could need medical attention."

"Will do, Dr. Cullen." Charlie slammed his door and pulled away from me. He was already on the radio the moment that the door closed. It was going to be a very long night for him.

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**A/n**

**Thanks to all those who voted for Fire and Ash over on LFN. ;-) It was awarded "Best Rebirth of Bella." I favorited the recs so you can find them on my profile. It's also been nom'd for Best Angst/Tragedy over here:**

**http://forum****(dot)fanfiction(dot)net/topic/66481/20624122/1/ **


	4. Chapter 4 Possessions

**A/n Here goes another chapter. Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer. This weird messed up situation belongs to me. **

**Thanks to KnittingVamp7 for beta'ing this so quickly even though she's burning the midnight oil on some other things right now. I love you babe.**

**Thanks to Aleighy for prereading.**

**News in the end note.**

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I walked into the house as far ahead of Edward as I could. His encounter with my father left me feeling disgusted, betrayed, and empty. Edward's ability to lie so effectively left me with no faith in him. I didn't know what I could trust that had come out of his mouth. Once I got into the house, I didn't know where he would go. I wanted to be on the edge of my twenty yards. I wanted to be away from him. I wanted to grieve for my missed life with Charlie in peace.

I settled into the nook under the stairs. It was the only place that seemed fitting for a ghost in the ultra white, ultra clean, ultra normal house for vampires. I tucked my spirit into a ball and hugged myself the way I remembered Renee holding me as a child. She would hold me together with her own body on nights when I was too scared or afraid to be alone. I would never know that kind of touch again. No one would be able to hold me.

I was aware of Edward coming closer but I was paralyzed by grief.

Charlie would be alone and he would blame himself. He would never forgive himself for what happened. I sobbed and pulled myself tighter. I didn't want the liar so close to me. I wanted my father back. I wanted a chance to take care of him and to be a better daughter but I wasn't going to get that. Instead, I was imprisoned with a murderous liar and I couldn't get away. I was completely hopeless.

The Cullens were talking, milling about and making noise. It grated on my nerves and stung like salt water on freshly shaved legs. I sat in my misery and they didn't even have the common courtesy to remain quiet or to grieve. My death was just a fact of life to them. Something sad that wasn't connected to them. They had done their best but I wasn't their problem. But the least they could do was shut up and let me cry in peace.

"Bella..." He was next to me.

I broke into a wail. It was a long keening deathly wail that echoed through the structure of the house. Metal and wood and glass shook and reverberated with my cry.

He winced.

"The lie was necessary, Bella," he tried to explain but my ears were deaf. I couldn't feel or hear past my own emotional breakdown. For the first time since I had been a very little girl, I wanted my father and Edward wasn't a viable substitute.

"Bella," he tried to touch me and I recoiled. I didn't want his hand to pass through me and shock me again. I didn't want him to feel me in such an intimate way. "Bella, I'm sorry." He tried again and I flinched back into the wall. "Bella, I am so sorry," his voice broke and there was silence in the rest of the room.

Carlisle was quickly holding Edward in his arms. The younger vampire sobbed and received the comfort that I would never have. Carlisle sobbed with him. There were no tears. I pondered in my bitter despair exactly why Carlisle would have a reason to fake crying. He didn't know that I was there.

"I killed her," Edward sobbed; his skin didn't change how mine would have if I had been crying as harshly as he did. He was pretty good at faking it. "I killed her and she's still here talking to me. She can't leave. Why can't she leave?"

"He's snapped," Emmett gaped. "All of those years of self-hatred have finally driven him mad."

"No, it's deeper than that. I think that he could have loved her," Alice sighed. "I caught a vision earlier. He wasn't trying to drain her; he was trying to change her**.** For a fleeting moment she was going to be our sister."

There was a combined gasp from the others. I couldn't care less. He didn't ask or tell me the risks and consequences of what I'd unknowingly consented to when I let him drain me. His reasons had to be selfish, didn't they?

I uncurled myself from my ball and decided to get away from him. I wanted my whole twenty yards and I wanted it immediately. I slid past Edward and his "father". I had to pass partially into the staircase to get away without touching either of them. I wasn't ready to hear about his pain nor did I believe it. I shifted through the staircase to the other side. Instead of the oneness that I'd felt with the tree, I simply sifted through the stairs to the other side.

I searched for a place where I could find peace. As it turns out, twenty yards is a considerable amount of space. I made my way all the way to the attic of the Cullen mansion. It was quiet there and free of vampires. They were still moving around beneath me but I didn't have to deal with them.

The attic was more of an overly organized storage room. There were rows of shelves lined with acid free boxes of history. Of course, I couldn't open a single one of them. I read the labels; most of them were dated and labeled with a family member's name. The dates spanned back in some cases decades but I noticed that Carlisle's boxes went back centuries. There was an impressive looking sealed box labeled "Volterra 1700-1750." I balked at it. He couldn't be that old. It wasn't possible. The man barely looked twenty-five.

Edward's oldest box held the label "Edward Anthony Masen, 1918." I stared at it and let my fingers slip through the corner of it. It felt no different from passing my fingers through any other solid object. I don't know if I had expected it to be different. I wanted this box opened. So, I continued to stare at it. Perhaps if I figured out the puzzle that was Edward Cullen then I could go on my merry way into the ether.

I don't know how long I stood there. The sky eventually lightened and the noises shifted lower into the house. I heard a crash from the next floor down. I didn't want to move from my spot to find out what it was. I was going to stay in the attic for the rest of my existence. Little did I know that my new job as fate's plaything included returning to high school as a ghost. The invisible wall that penned me in with Edward pulled me away from the box that I had spent so long staring at and desperately trying to make my hands open.

I whooshed through the floor and down. The wall projected me away from it as I came down, causing me to land several feet from it on the bottom floor. I landed in the kitchen where I found Edward's – mother? – Esme. She sat at the table with her fingers interlaced and her head resting on top of them. She let out a huge sigh and her shoulders dropped. She looked devastated**,** like she had lost her home and family in some terrible accident.

Instinctively my fingers reached to comfort her. As my hand touched hers I felt a slight pull. I lined my fingers up with hers and they felt like they were my own. She looked slightly puzzled. I blinked and decided to try something. I slid into the chair and mimicked her posture. I clicked into her body like a puzzle piece. In life I was shorter than her, but my spirit expanded to fill her form.

Sound whooshed into my ears, her ears? Things were louder, colors were more intense, and the dim light of the kitchen was brighter. I jumped slightly at the onset of new sensations and Esme's body jumped with me. Her hands were my hands. Her ears were my ears. However, her body was so much different than mine had been. It was stronger, harder, more powerful, and she could see and hear more than I had ever dreamed possible. I drummed the fingers of our right hand on the table and watched four small dents appear. I found them fascinating and ducked my head down to look at them more closely. When a strand of caramel colored hair interrupted my vision, I jumped and the chair under me teetered dangerously.

_Remember, this is Esme's body_, I chided.

I heard footsteps and got up to find their source. It was disorienting**;** I was at the door to the porch off of the kitchen as soon as I thought about it. I looked out toward the woods and caught a glimpse of Carlisle walking up to the house. His feet fell in time to the noise I'd heard. A hand flew and covered my mouth. I could hear his footsteps from that far away**?** I was mesmerized by the way he walked. The motion was smooth**,** like he was gliding, and fast, much faster than I'd seen someone "walk". He was a very attractive man. I suppressed a giggle. If I could hear him walking then he would definitely be able to hear a giggle.

When he entered the kitchen he came straight to me and wrapped his arms around my waist. I stiffened for a moment and he stopped to look at me.

_You're his wife, _I reminded myself and forced my body to relax. It was uncomfortable and strange to have a man's arms around me like that. It felt like I was intruding and I probably was. He dropped his head and nuzzled my neck. I rather awkwardly searched for something to do with my hands and ultimately ran my fingers through his blond hair.

"What are we going to do, Esme?" His breath was cool on my neck and I started just a bit at the sensation. Then it occurred to me – I had to speak.

"Well, um, I , uh, I – "

"Alice is down by the river with him." He pulled me tighter. "She's going to try and get him to go to school. He has to, otherwise suspicion will surely rest on him."

"Well, he did kill me – her. He did kill her, darling," I spoke without thinking. _Did he think anything about my slip? Was darling the right term of endearment? _

Carlisle froze. _I got it wrong. Crud!_

"It's killing all of us, Esme," he sighed. "But we need to keep up appearances."

"So we don't get caught," the response came and I hoped that it was once again the right one. Esme's voice sounded wrong coming from me, like hand-bells being wrung by someone who didn't know what to do with them.

"This is possibly the most dangerous mistake any of us have ever made. If the Quileutes find out, our treaty will be in danger," he paused. "Not that they can really enforce it. We haven't seen any wolves since we arrived so it's likely that we're safe from that …"

_Wolves?_ I fought not to stiffen up again. Carlisle kept talking.

"Don't worry." He straightened and looked into my eyes. Gosh, his eyes were just as captivating as Edwards. "We always find a way, don't we?"

"We do?" It was supposed to be a statement.

"I have to get to my shift at the hospital. Will you be all right? You seem a little upset?" Carlisle brushed my cheek.

"No!" _That was wrong._ "I mean, I'm fine**,** Doc- darling. I'll be fine. Go on to work."

He gave me a kiss that I had to work at reciprocating. His lips were soft and warm and Esme's body reacted to him in a way that made me squirm. He pulled in one deep inhalation from her hair before leaving the room, and I almost giggled again. I had to get out of Esme's body. I took her back over to the table and sat down in the same position, just in case she didn't remember - I hoped that she didn't remember what I'd been doing. I slid slowly out of her body and her hand went to her abdomen before she blinked and looked at the table. She ran her fingers over the dents.

Carlisle came back through and kissed her on the forehead.

"Is Edward going to school?" She looked up.

"I've just told you, Alice is with him. She's trying to get him to go." Carlisle stared at his wife, stunned. What had I done?

"Sorry." She shook her head a bit and her hair swirled slightly over her shoulders. He walked back to her and bent down to gaze into her eyes.

"There's nothing to be sorry about. We're all under a lot of stress." He kissed her again and rushed to his car.

"Now, who would have dented the table?" She glanced down at the dents in the table and fitted her fingers into them. "Looks like it was me," she hummed and rose.

I felt a tingling at the base of my neck and turned to look out the window. Edward and Alice strode arm in arm across the yard. Part of me was excited about my ability to possess Esme and I wanted to tell someone. However, the only person to tell was Edward and I still didn't want to talk to him. Deep down I knew that I was kidding myself. If I wanted any social interaction as myself he was the only person to whom I could turn. Otherwise I'd have to pretend to be Alice.

_Hmmmm... Pretend to be Alice._ The thought was somewhat appealing. The only problem being that I didn't know any of the Cullens well enough to impersonate them. The possibilities were endless... I wondered if the ability worked on everyone or only vampires. Vampires were, after all, undead. I would have to test this hypothesis. Suddenly the prospect of attending school seemed much more fun.

The door opened slowly and Alice ushered Edward inside. She gave him instructions about what to wear to school. Alice Cullen was really quite bossy. Edward looked straight at me. Ironically, he looked dead, even for someone who was undead. Was that really what he was? Undead? I considered asking but I still didn't feel like talking, not to him. It occurred to me that I could use my new found ability to get back at him, at least a little bit. Revenge would make me feel better, less like a victim. I had plenty of time to find ways to mess with Edward, and I planned on thoroughly messing with him by the end of the day.

Edward walked past me without a word. I wasn't fond of that. It wasn't that I really wanted to speak to him, or desired and interaction with him, but some acknowledgement of my presence would have been nice. It was true that his family now thought that he was crazy, or at least Alice did, but who's to say that he didn't deserve that. I certainly felt like he deserved whatever he got when it came to this situation.

With Edward out of the room, Alice and Esme exhaled simultaneously. Esme looked at Alice who shrugged a bit and watched her toe rub a tiny path around one of the stone tiles on the floor. Esme walked over to her and embraced her. Alice wrapped her arms around Esme and squeezed tightly. The two shook slightly. I felt like I was intruding even though neither of the women could see me. This was a private moment between a mother and a daughter and even though Alice wasn't Esme's child it certainly seemed like she was.

"He really is going insane," Alice sobbed.

"I know," Esme comforted her. "Don't worry, Carlisle will figure something out." She smoothed Alice's hair only to have it spring back up.

"Esme, he really thinks that he can see her, that she's really there." Alice's eyes held no tears but she sounded sincere. I couldn't reconcile that. No one sobbed like that without crying.

"Maybe it's just the guilt. You said that he might have loved her." Esme pulled back slightly and Alice stepped away out of her arms.

"I really think that he could have. Edward finally found someone who could have been perfect for him after all these years, and she had to be human." The smaller vampire shook her head.

"It's Edward. Nothing is simple where he's concerned." Esme had just finished speaking when Edward made his way back into the room. He still looked handsome. Alice had picked out some faded jeans and an oxford shirt that he wore partially unbuttoned over a T-shirt. The red was fading quickly from his eyes. They were somewhere between orange and gold, but more gold. It occurred to me that he may have had to hunt close to the house that morning in order to obtain that shade since draining one deer the night before had only dulled the color to ocher.

"I'm not crazy," Edward sighed. "She's here."

"If she's here then why can't we see or hear her?" Alice had meant to challenge him but the effort was half-hearted.

"I've told you, I don't know. But she's stuck here." He looked at the two of them. "I have to find a way to set her free."

"Maybe you just shouldn't have killed me in the first place," I mumbled. He flinched but didn't turn to look at me.

"Alice, school?" He nodded impatiently toward the door.

I dutifully followed Edward and Alice to the car. Rosalie, Emmett, and Jasper were already waiting for them. Edward huffed as Rosalie sat in the drivers seat. He slid into the back between Jasper and Alice. Once again, there was no place for me.

"No need to save a seat for the ghost," I muttered and parked my rear end on the trunk of the car, again.

The car peeled out of the drive and down the road. We were headed to school because even in death I couldn't seem to escape the slow torture of having my brain be sucked out by Forks High. There were worse things than being stuck with Edward Cullen.

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**End Note:**

**Thank you all for reading and reviewing! It keeps this story going.**

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**#3 With a Burning Heart**

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	5. Chapter 5 Stinking Vampires

**A/n**

**Thanks to KnittingVamp7 and her awesome beta skills, and to Aleighy for prereading. Sorry for the delay but this chapter took a lot of research. I've tried to make it line up with the series as much as possible. **

**More news in the EndNote.**

* * *

High school is bad enough when you're a living, breathing teenager and required by law to be there. However, the experience of an average teenager forced to sit through lecture after lecture and the vapid musings of fellow teens cannot compare with the experience of one who no longer has a body and is forcibly dragged there by her murderer. If I thought it was bad before, was sorely mistaken when the silver Volvo pulled into the parking lot at Forks High. I watched five vampires slip out of their vehicle and glide across the lot. They drew the eyes of every member of the student body. All five were like models on a catwalk, demanding attention but refusing to acknowledge it.

Stinking vampires.

I kept up the pretense of pretending to walk behind them. I kept an eye out for anyone other than Edward who could see me. No one seemed to react even when I slipped my hand through passing cars in the lot. I was truly invisible. After years of not being noticed in Phoenix and then being the center of attention yesterday – was it only yesterday? – being invisible again was a relief.

"Bella, stop it," Edward mumbled. His siblings noticed the comment; it earned a brief glance from each of them, followed by a hushed conversation.

"What else am I supposed to do? Pretend like I'm actually here, Edward?"

"Listen, you might not have to keep up appearances but I still do," he growled.

"You're a pretty good actor, I think that you can deal with it," I snapped and walked through a brick wall into the school.

I took an instinctive but completely superfluous deep breath and blew nonexistent air out through my pursed lips. The murderous vampire had the nerve to tell me what to do. I glanced around to see what room I'd walked into only to discover that I was standing in one of the toilets in the girl's restroom. Jessica Stanley burst into the stall, and I shot out of there at lightning speed.

Lauren Mallory was standing in front of the bay of sinks fixing her make-up. Angela Webber stood just to the side with her backpack hanging off of one shoulder and her shoulders slumped. She was obviously upset about something. Lauren glanced at her but continued to primp.

"Ya know, Ang, you could use some ..." Lauren tried to pass a tube of lipstick to Angela who shook her head.

"Do you know how many infectious diseases you could catch from sharing lipstick?" Angela asked.

"No, but I'm sure that you do..." Lauren sang and turned back to the mirror. The toilet flushed and Jessica emerged, tucking her shirt into her too-tight jeans.

"So like I was saying, the Swan girl and Cullen -" Jessica started.

"She's missing, you know?" Angela cut her off.

"I hate to say it but good riddance. Mike said that like she totally threw herself at Cullen in Bio?" Jessica scoffed. "That chick has got Daddy issues."

I clenched my fist. How dare this harpy attack my relationship with my father?

"Wait?" Lauren interjected. "She threw herself at Cullen? Like Edward Cullen?" The girl spoke in questions due to the fact that her voice meandered up in pitch at the end of each sentence.

"Oh, yeah!" Jessica responded. "And he totally didn't seem to mind. I heard he totally dry humped her right in class."

"Like, really?"

"This is serious, guys. She hasn't been seen since they left Banner's class," Angela interrupted. I knew that I liked Angela.

"I bet that Cullen is a total perv," Jessica said.

"They sent a search party off into the woods last night -"

"Like, I wonder if he like killed her and buried the body? He's so freaky but like in a hot way?" Lauren cut Angela off. "Freaky-hot. I don't care if he like buried me in the woods; I just want to jump his bones first. Do you think he'd like tie me up? That would be like so hot –"

"Seriously, they can't find her!" Angela was getting upset.

"Okay, we _so_ don't need another ho throwing herself at Edward Cullen. I say good riddance, totally," Jessica snapped.

Angela shook her head and stormed out of the bathroom. The remaining two girls shared a pointed glance before returning to the mirror. I growled at them and waved my hands in furiously in their faces. It was pointless. I couldn't affect anything ... _unless_... Perhaps I could do what I did with Esme with one of these two. I smirked. This could be amusing.

The bell rang.

I followed Lauren into English and waited for her attention to wane before slipping into her body. It didn't take long. Mr. Mason was lecturing on _Wuthering Heights_ and although it was one of my favorite books, it obviously held little interest for the average teenager. Lauren had a copy of the Cliffs Notes for it tucked inside her book. Her expression shifted from feigned interest to complete boredom within the first two minutes.

I sat on top of her much like I had with Esme, and felt myself sink slowly down. The sensation was the same and yet altogether different. Lauren's body felt slower and more similar to mine. But I could also still feel her in the background. I wondered if she knew that I was there. I experimentally tried to move and found that I could pick up her pen. A wry smile came to my borrowed lips.

_Jessica Stanley is a simpleminded fool._ I scrawled the words and then scratched them out. Lauren wouldn't have used the word simpleminded. I found that I could easily flip through Lauren's memories – that was different from Esme, too. I examined her mind until I found something inflammatory that would fit.

_Jessica Stanley is a skanky ho-bag. _Lauren's hands seemed to automatically write in her own handwriting. That was convenient. I folded the note and passed it to Eric. Lauren and Jessica were going down.

I decided to do Lauren a bit of a favor since I was ruining her social life. I took notes. I could feel Eric's eyes on me. I turned to look at him and caught him staring. He gestured to the note in his hand and cocked his head to the side. I motioned for him to pass the note around. He shook his head and passed it on the Mike, the golden retriever like boy that I'd met the day before. Mike's eye went wide and he pocketed the note.

I felt a devious grin spread across my face. I could use Lauren to bother Edward. I couldn't hurt him physically but I could get under his skin. He had said that secrecy was important. Lauren could threaten that. I ripped a piece of notebook paper out of her binder and wrote:

_MURDERER_

I folder the paper and tucked it into the pocket of Lauren's jeans. I scanned through her memories and picked up that she had government second period and Edward was in her class. It amazed me that Forks high warranted more than one teacher for government. Granted, it was a required class but it made no sense to have two class periods of it at once. My government class was across the hall from theirs.

Lauren's body moved with this inadvertent hip shake going down the hall. It was rather disconcerting. Did the girl think that she was walking the catwalk in Paris all the time or something? I kept trying to still her hips, to no avail. Guys were staring. I felt uncomfortable, but the tell tale blush that I was so used to failed to bloom across Lauren's cheeks. Apparently, she didn't blush.

Edward wasn't in class when I got there. I looked around and surreptitiously dropped the note on his desk before slipping into Lauren's and sliding out of her body to go find Edward. I quickly searched for the center of my invisible prison, twenty yards wasn't far. I had to make sure that he went to class. If he didn't then I'd have to go back and collect the note.

The nucleus of my Edward-bubble wasn't hard to find. Even without a body I could feel a pull between us. A string tied my heart to him. If I focused then I could almost see it. I had to admit that I felt a little anxious being away from him. My attachment and hatred for him were difficult to reconcile. I'd never actually hated someone before.

He looked up when I approached.

"Do you need something, Bella?" he whispered.

"Why would I need something? I don't exactly have physical needs anymore – you kind of took care of that," I snarked at him.

"Listen, if you're just going to berate me there's no sense in the two of us talking." His face tightened a bit around the eyes as he tried to stay calm.

"Fine, where are you going to be so I know where my boundaries are?" I folded my arms.

"Government," he spat in a whisper.

"I won't see you there, then," I snapped and drifted my way over to the wall. I navigated my way through the walls and found a nice position from whence I could watch Edward.

He eyed the note warily as he approached the desk. He flipped it open and his eyebrows shot up for a fraction of a second before he schooled his features back to stillness. He fell into his chair and brought the sheet of paper up just under his nose. He drew in a long breath and turned his head to look at Lauren Mallory.

The foolish girl smiled at him and waved her fingers. It looked like she thought that she was getting some positive attention from him. I wondered how serious she was about wanting him to tie her up in the woods. I shivered. No matter how much she thought she wanted that, I was positive that if she knew what it meant then she really wouldn't. Her shameless flirting continued as she brushed her long blond hair over her shoulder and slowly leaned down to look into her book bag. Her low-cut top showed off quite a bit more cleavage than should be seen in a school setting.

Had I just been in that body showing off that much? It was a wonder that I didn't feel uncomfortable before the walk down the hallway.

Edward focused intently on the top of her head. The fact that he wasn't looking at her body made me inordinately happy. I hated it. Why couldn't he just ogle her boobs and make me feel better about hating him?

I observed his reactions for the first half of the class period before heading off to find Jessica Stanley. Jessica was sitting in second period Bio with her head on her desk and her eyes drooping closed. I slid on top of her into her seat and instantly felt her exhaustion. It seemed that little Miss Jessica had been up talking to Lauren and Mike until around two o'clock. She and Lauren had been nasty about me even then. She was shocked by Mike's admission that he thought I was 'kind of cute.' Truthfully, that shocked me too.

I fought Jessica's desire to sleep and pulled her head up off of the cold black counter top. I rifled through her bag and wrote another note to Edward. Jessica was quite the little stalker. She knew which locker belonged to him. This note said:

_WHERE'S BELLA, EDWARD?_

I scribbled another note, this one about Lauren Mallory enjoying being tied up and passed it to Jessica's lab partner. I thought his name might be Tyler. Tyler smirked and wrote something just under my comment before passing it back.

_Really? So, do you think she'd go out with me?_

I suppressed a giggle. Giggling was easy to do as Jessica. The sensation felt odd.

_Don't know, but it can't hurt to ask – unless you want it to …_

He chuckled and tucked the note into his pocket. I felt slightly guilty about meddling in Jessica and Lauren's lives but the two had it coming. Jessica had just pretended to be my friend the day before and this kind of behavior was not to be tolerated. You can't be someone's friend and then talk like that behind her back, even if you think that she's dead. I would probably regret my actions later. I did leave Jessica with some very nice Biology notes though, complete with tips for remembering the topics covered in class. If I ever got to completely die I was most likely going to hell for being vindictive.

The bell rang and I waltzed Jessica's body over to Edward's locker and tucked the note into the vent at the top. I listened and heard it land with a soft whisking noise on top of something in the middle of the locker. Hopefully he used the locker. I stepped out of Jessica's body and instantly missed the warmth and sensation that came with being corporeal. I even longed for the fatigue that she felt.

Jessica blinked at the gray locker a few times before jumping with a start and heading down the hall to Trig, where she would have met me. Her curly hair bounced behind her down her back. I analyzed her reaction. Neither she nor Lauren seemed too terribly concerned about the fact that they'd lost time. Perhaps I didn't have to be as careful with humans as I did with vampires.

Esme had been disturbed by missing the conversation with Carlisle that morning but neither Jessica nor Lauren seemed too upset by showing up in an entirely different place. Did they have any recollection of what I'd done while I possessed them? That could backfire if Edward read their minds.

I was going to have to find a way to interrogate them. I hated to do it but my best choice for that would be Mike or Angela. They had both been kind to me. Angela was in the same Trigonometry class as Jessica. I sighed and followed Jessica only to find that I couldn't make it all the way there. I hit my boundary.

Stinking vampire!

Lacking any real purpose without being able to follow Jessica to my normal class, I was pulled toward the center of my bubble. Why did Edward have to be the center of my world? I dutifully stormed off to find him so that I would know where my twenty yard boundary lay. I'd apparently been skirting the edge of it for the past hour.

I found him in Mr. Mason's English class. I could have sat and listened to the same lecture over again but I opted to take a walk. I found Mr. Berty's Senior English class across the hall discussing _Much Ado About Nothing_, which wasn't exactly standard high school fare. I decided to hover my way through the class on top of an empty desk in the back of the room. It was apparent from the discussion that they'd covered _Romeo and Juliet_ during the fall and were now comparing Shakespeare's treatment of the characters. I'd always been more partial to _Romeo and Juliet_ but if given the opportunity, the other play could have grown on me, provided I could find a way to read it. Third period was the fastest hour of the day because I was actually interested in the class.

Edward met me on the way out of class. His eyebrow tipped upward and he smirked at me. I shot him an accusing glare in response. My mood had been softened a bit by Mr. Shakespeare but not enough to be friendly.

"Where to now?" I groaned.

"Gym," he whispered.

"Gym?" I whined. "There's nowhere to go near the gym. I'm going to be stuck in there with you or outside!"

"Sorry, I can't skip. Coach Clapp is rather strict about attendance and I need to save my absences for sunny days," he said softly.

"Oh, so you don't burn to death, right?"

"You shouldn't believe everything you read, Bella." He laughed.

"Well, why don't you enlighten me, Nosferatu?" I snapped at him.

"The sun doesn't burn us, but it exposes what we are," he sighed.

"Okay... Coffins?"

"Well, if you hadn't spent the night hiding in the attic you would have noticed that we don't sleep," he snapped.

"Sorry, after seeing my grieving father, I didn't exactly feel like hanging out," I shot back. I looked around and noticed that we were heading for his locker. I could _not_ be there when he opened it. "You know what? I don't want to talk to you."

I turned and walked through the nearest wall, right into Tyler Crowley. I had a tenth of a second to brace myself for the onslaught of sensation. It never came. I was inside Tyler's body but I couldn't feel it. He kept walking. I was propelled out the door on his feet. He passed Edward and thought how pale and odd he thought the other boy was but kept moving.

_No, no, look at him, _I thought.

Tyler turned his head just in time to meet Edward's eyes. Edward was obviously upset. He held the note from Jessica in his hand. I noticed that he shook slightly.

_Freak_. Tyler shook his head and sped off to class. He happened to be going to gym. That worked out just fine for me.

I tried not to look at anything in the locker room. I was quite certain that I didn't want my first time seeing the naked male form to be in the locker room of Forks High. Fortunately, Tyler didn't look around other than to smack the completely clothed butt of one of his friends, and he didn't change out of his boxers. I didn't know whether or not that was normal but I had this fear that he would have to put on an athletic cup and then I'd be confronted with – well -- _that_.

I was favored with a brief glance of Edward Cullen's naked back on the way out. It was a good thing that I was just along for the ride because had I been in control of Tyler at that point, then I would have stopped to stare at him for an embarrassingly long period of time. He was deceptively slim but underneath his clothes he was all muscle.

_So pretty, _I sighed.

_I am not gay. Cullen is not pretty, _Tyler retaliated.

I realized that Tyler could hear me. A split second later Edward reflexively turned and I realized that Edward could hear Tyler. Edward thought Tyler -

_Not good! Move it, Tyler, Cullen is looking at you!_

Mercifully, Tyler picked up his pace and got out of the locker room. Edward was right behind him, pulling on his shirt as he walked through the door. Tyler took us to stand with a group of guys I didn't recognize. I caught Edward moving toward Alice out of the corner of Tyler's eyes but he refused to turn his head because, "looking at Cullen would look gay."

Why was Tyler so concerned with what people thought about his sexuality? Were all teenage males like this?

Coach Clapp sent everyone off to play volleyball and I found that Edward and Alice were on the opposing team. I smiled to myself. Perhaps gym wasn't going to be so boring after all. The ball was served and the game went normally until I noticed that Tyler was going to spike the ball.

_Hit Edward! He thinks you're attracted to him!_

Tyler was too easy to manipulate. He was so concerned that I thought he might secretly be battling his sexuality. Those thoughts seemed to spur him on. Anytime the ball came near him he viciously hit it at Edward. Edward of course dodged the balls that were sent directly at his head and returned them over the net. Alice looked at him and then at Tyler in shock. She had deduced that something wasn't quite right.

Edward's eyes were getting dangerously narrow when Coach Clapp blew his whistle to signal the end of class. Tyler took the initiative to bump into Edward's cold, hard shoulder on the way out and barely concealed a wince. He hadn't expected him to be hard as a rock. I slipped out of Tyler's body and flitted out of sight before Edward could catch me.

I silently followed him and Alice to lunch.

Lunch.

I kind of missed food. I briefly considered sneaking into another student just to eat but decided against it. I didn't want to risk getting caught.

"I don't know but it looks like someone around here knows that I'm responsible," Edward whispered to Alice. It took me a few seconds to process that she had thought a question and he was responding verbally.

Alice's head cocked to the side and her eyes narrowed.

"So far, I've received two notes that lead me to believe the contrary, Alice," he mumbled.

Alice sighed and they took their trays of food to the table. They sat with the rest of the Cullen clan in silence until Alice sat up straight.

"Guys, act human. Angela Webber is coming over to talk to Edward." Alice gestured frantically and it was like a switch had been flipped. Emmett instantly told a joke, Rosalie hit him, Jasper and Alice laughed, and Edward smiled – all in time for Angela's arrival at the table.

"Edward, can I ask you something privately?" Angela stammered.

Edward nodded and followed her out of the cafeteria. I glided behind him. This had to be about me. I was amazed that seemingly shy Angela had summoned the courage to walk over to the intimidating Cullens. As soon as we made it into the hallway she stopped and slowly turned around, steeling herself to ask her question.

"Did Bella run away?" she asked.

"I don't know, Angela." He frowned. "I left her on the trail. She told me that she needed to get home," he elaborated. Angela's brow furrowed a bit.

"She didn't mention anything before she left?"

"No. I wish she had. I wish I had known not to – I would have done things differently," he said hesitantly. It was like he was trying to give the dark-haired girl as much of the truth as he could.

"Okay, thank you," she responded with a frown.

"I'm sorry. I know that you wanted to be her friend," he sighed and turned away to walk back to his family.

"Edward," she called. He turned to look at her. "I'm sorry, too. I know that it must be hard for you. You're not like the other hormonal teenage boys around here. A girl finally caught your interest and now she's gone."

Edward gave a sad nod in response before pushing his way back through the doors. Angela followed and they parted company. We were halfway back to the table when he turned to me.

"She's a good person. I think that you would have really liked her," he whispered sadly.

"I know. I did," I responded.

Edward looked crushed. I stayed close to him for the rest of the day. For some reason I couldn't bring myself to walk away from him like that. I wanted to take care of him.

* * *

**End Note:**

**I hope that y'all enjoyed that. **

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	6. Chapter 6 Remorse

**A/n: I know, I know, I suck! Updates are slow. At least I was kind enough to get this done BEFORE heading off to camp. **

**Thanks to KnittingVamp7 for dropping everything to beta this mess.**

**More news in the end note.**

**

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**

I sat on the trunk of the car and attempted to analyze my attachment to Edward. I had initially thought that the attraction was a purely physical draw. However, I didn't have a body and even through my anger I felt the need to make things right for him, to offer him comfort. I shouldn't have wanted to comfort him. He deserved what he got. The whole situation was out of control and confusing.

What made things worse was that I actually felt guilty for having messed with him. That was troublesome because I still wanted some form of retribution. Deep down I knew that revenge is wrong and all of that wonderful moral stuff that you're supposed to learn in kindergarten. However, Edward Cullen pushed me to the point of rage and frustration in the most irritating way.

To be honest, part of that stemmed from the fact that I kind of wanted to lick him.

_Lick him?_

Yes, subconscious, I want to lick him.

_And now I'm talking to myself – this is healthy._

You're the one that started talking.

_Bite me._

No, thanks, someone already did that_ yesterday_.

I really was insane. I tried to place whether or not I was insane before dying. However, that's really hard to judge. Can one really gauge one's own sanity? Okay, to a certain extent, I could. Since arriving at Forks High School I had most certainly demonstrated insane behavior. I acted like a lunatic. I chased after a boy/vampire without regard to my own personal safety or well-being. This didn't really bode well for the whole "this is all Edward's fault" argument.

Maybe it was his fault. Maybe he dazzled me into submission. Perhaps vampires emitted some form of addictive pheromone and I was just more susceptible to it than others. Was it magic? Did Edward Cullen bewitch me? Was this sort of behavior normal for him? Would Lauren Mallory be next?

_Ew, new thought please._

I got a new thought in the form of a tall Native American man standing in the Cullen's driveway when we pulled in. He and Carlisle were standing on opposite sides of the gravel drive with arms crossed. Both appeared tense. The car stopped before we reached the meeting, and the younger Cullens exited the vehicle. They moved to stand by Carlisle. I followed close behind Edward.

"Listen, we know that you had something to do with her disappearance. Your stench is all over her trail," The man spat.

"Who is that?"

Edward was shocked that I'd spoken. He turned rapidly to look at me causing his family to tense. Jasper dropped into a crouch facing away from the visitor.

"Sorry," I whispered, as if my volume mattered.

Edward's jaw was set and his lips formed a hard line. He was going to be angry with me again. He nodded and turned around cautiously. It didn't really bother me. He could be mad all he wanted there was nothing that he could do.

"As I was saying, we want the vampire responsible or we will destroy all of you."

Edward inclined his chin slightly toward Carlisle and then walked to the house. The gravel crunched softly under his feet. I stayed to listen to the meeting.

"Chief Uley, surely you recognize that all of our eyes are gold. None of us has fed on a human in years," Carlisle assured him.

_Liar._

I wondered if Edward's eyes were still tinted slightly from my blood. Was that why he walked away? Carlisle had obviously communicated something to him. I also wondered how exactly this guy was chief; he couldn't have been more than twenty. Shouldn't he have been older, wiser? And how exactly he planned on destroying a coven full of vampires when he was so obviously human baffled me.

"The investigation will continue. You've been warned." The Chief turned and walked to the woods instead of up the driveway. The entire exchange was puzzling, including his departure. How exactly was he going to make it all the way to LaPush? That was one heck of a walk.

Disregarding the rest of the Cullens, I went through the door – literally – and went to look for Edward. I found him with his fingers ghosting over the keys of the piano in the living room. It seemed like an invisible force prevented him from pressing down on the keys. He was truly pitiful in that moment.

"You can show your eyes again, he's gone," I whispered.

"I know that you don't believe me, but I'm sorry," he murmured back to me. I sat down on the bench next to him. Sitting on top of an object was weird. I had to concentrate not to pass through it and I couldn't feel the surface under me. I don't know why I bothered; perhaps I did it to make Edward more comfortable.

_I still hate him, _I reminded myself.

_But I kind of pity him at the same time, _I conceded.

"What was that about?" I asked.

"What?"

"That display outside. That Uley guy seems to know what you are and thinks that he can do something to you." I ran my own fingers over the keyboard.

"Do you – I mean – did you play?" he asked.

"No, never. I'm not what you would call musically talented," I explained.

"I'm sure you just never found the right instrument," he sighed.

"You're avoiding my question," I said.

"I know. I can't decide how to phrase an appropriate answer, knowing that he's friends with your father," he said. He ran a hand back through his hair again. "The reason that he's not afraid of us is that he doesn't have to be."

I cocked my head at him and stared in disbelief.

"He's a werewolf, Bella. They can kill us."

"Wait, like full moon, bites people, howling werewolf?" My fingers stopped in their place.

"Not quite. He and his tribe are more like changelings. They see themselves as protectors. They only harm vampires." His hand remained in his hair.

"So, Charlie's safe?" I asked, peeking up at him.

"For the most part …"

"What's that supposed to mean?" I cut him off, and shifted to stare at him head on.

"They can be a bit volatile when they're young," he explained. I stared at him. "But Charlie doesn't spend time with any of the Quileute teenagers, does he?"

"No, well … not really. There is Jacob Black," I said. "He's Billy Black's son. He brought my truck over when I first got here."

"The Black child isn't a werewolf, at least not yet."

"How do you know?" I looked away from him and back down at the keyboard again.

"They smell bad. I would have known the second you came near me since he's ridden in your truck recently." He shifted. "They wouldn't ever intentionally harm Charlie. As a matter of fact, they're out there looking for you for Charlie."

"Oh!" I paused, "But doesn't the whole full moon thing limit them?"

He chuckled darkly before looking down at me. "They don't have to wait for one. The Quileute werewolves can change on demand, and they're lethal."

"Why live here then if you're in danger?" I asked.

"It's the rainiest place in the continental U.S. We don't have to worry as much about exposure, and we have a treaty with the tribe. So long as we don't feed off of humans, they won't touch us," he explained.

"But you broke the rule." I touched my neck. I missed the feel of warm flesh under my fingertips. I could feel my skin, my neck felt solid – unlike the piano – but it wasn't warm, and neither was my hand.

"Yes," he sighed, "and you have no idea how much that pains me. I didn't want to hurt you." He reached up like he was going to place his hand over mine but stopped mid-motion. Feeling his hand slide through thin air would probably only accentuate his pain and mine. I wanted him to be able to touch me; I craved it.

"Will they attack?"

"Only if they feel that they have sufficient evidence that it was one of us, which they may. It depends on the rest of the council, Chief Uley can't make that decision on his own." He finally dropped his hand and went back to running it over the keys. "We're safe for now. They probably won't search far enough away to find where you died. Unless they find that, they won't have enough evidence to convince the elders to break the treaty." His voice cracked.

"So, what do we do?" I asked.

"_We_ don't do anything. My family will continue on as usual and pretend that I'm not insane, and I will continue to be reminded of my single biggest failure by having your presence around me every second of every day." He leaned forward and dropped his head in defeat.

"If I could leave, I would," I said.

"I know." He held unnaturally still.

"What if there was a way for me to leave?" I could feel a glimmer of hope down in the pit of my stomach. We would both feel better if I could just move on, and do whatever it is that spirits do.

He merely scoffed at the suggestion.

"No, seriously, what if there's someone else out there who knows about ghosts?" I couldn't keep the hopeful tone out of my voice. I sounded exactly like a naïve seventeen-year-old girl.

"I'm sure that if ghosts were common that we would have run into one before now." He sounded dead, flat. "Especially Carlisle, since he was born in the 17th century."

"I can't be the only one," I reasoned. "Something like this has to have happened before. Maybe if we can find a psychic -?"

"Alice _is _a psychic." He raised his head and eyed me. I felt stupid, but my argument had merit if he would just see it.

"A different type of psychic, then. Please, let's at least do some research?" I begged.

"No, Bella. I fear that we'll just have to suffer through this," he growled and huffed away from the piano.

"Ya know, for a vampire you're rather closed minded!" I shouted at his retreating form.

"For a ghost, you're rather annoying," he spat back.

This _could not_ go on forever. Dying was one thing but getting trapped with the world's broodiest vampire was too much. There had to be a way out and I was going to find it. I just had to convince Edward to get within twenty yards of someone who knew what I was, and how to reverse it. How exactly was I going to accomplish that?

The rest of the Cullens were filing into the house. I found myself fleeing from them, even though remaining in their presence would be just like being alone since they didn't know I was there. I fled to the attic.

Edward's boxes called to me again. I stood in front of his earliest box and stared at it. If I knew more about him then perhaps I'd be able to convince him to get help for me. I certainly couldn't get any form of assistance on my own. There had to be something useful in there. If only I could open it.

I reached out and willed my hands to be solid. They slid straight through the box as they did every other inanimate object. I concentrated harder. I stood there for a solid two minutes just staring at the thing and seeing my hands as solid objects in my mind. They passed through the box without resistance again.

I spent the entire evening and night in a futile attempt to open the box. The sky turned from gray to black outside the tiny window at the end of the attic before turning back again. I wasn't exhausted, which still kind of amazed me.

I sensed movement at the door and turned to find Edward leaning casually on the frame. A small smile graced his lips and I fought the urge to attempt smacking him. It wouldn't work anyway.

"What do you want?" I snapped.

"I'm just watching you," he said. "You're quite adorable when you're working on something."

"Go away, vampire."

"No, I don't think I will." He approached me slowly, gracefully, like he was floating rather than walking. I scowled at him. Neither of us had any power over each other. He couldn't hurt me, as I couldn't hurt him. We couldn't will each other away, either.

"What do you want?" I grunted at him.

"I just want to know why you're trying to open that box? You certainly seem desperate to get into it." He moved inhumanly fast to stand at my side and glance at the box I had tried so hard to open. "My things?"

"Yes, your things," I admitted and began to walk away. He followed me.

"Why?" He stepped in front of me and quirked an eyebrow.

"It's best to know one's enemy," I said and stepped around him.

"Is that really what I am, your enemy?" he sighed

"It's time for school," I stated and continued walking.

"Yes, it is." He followed me down the stairs ands to the car.

The seating situation remained the same as it had the day before. I supposed that I shouldn't have minded as being a ghost I couldn't get windblown hair and flying debris couldn't hurt me; it was annoying but it didn't hurt. However, a spot in the car would have been nice. Why couldn't Edward drive himself to school? At least if they took two cars then I could sit in the back and pretend to be corporeal.

We pulled in, too fast, and I hopped off of the trunk and walked to my barrier. As soon as Edward moved, I did. I planned on keeping my distance as much as possible. I couldn't figure out what I was going to do with my day. What can one do at school when not required to attend class, and unable to touch anything?

Then, I heard it. A high-pitched, girly scream echoed across the lot. I turned to look and found Jessica facing off with Lauren. The two girls were in a heated argument. Mike Newton tried to push himself between them only to be slapped by Lauren. Jessica turned beet red and smacked the blonde who reared back her arm. Tyler Crowley arrived on the scene just in time to catch Lauren around the waist and pull her back. Mike did the same with Jessica.

The Cullens were walking past me. I stood frozen, watching the catfight. Edward, Jasper, and Rosalie seemed not to notice. Emmett on the other hand looked like the cat who ate the canary. A broad smile was fixed on his face.

"Girl fights are hot!" he exclaimed. Rosalie smacked his arm and continued to pull him along toward the school.

"I just don't understand what would possess Lauren to say something like that about her friend." Alice looked puzzled. Her tiny brows were scrunched together, and she clicked her tongue in disgust. "I'm so glad I don't remember being human."

I began to follow them.

"What's puzzling about this is that Lauren is puzzled by Jessica's screaming fit," Jasper mumbled.

"No, the entire situation is suspect." Edward looked at me. "Apparently Mike received the note directly from Lauren. He remembers it very clearly. However, Lauren doesn't remember it."

_Oh gosh, I did that. _I felt my teeth tug at my lip.

"'Something is rotten in the state of Denmark'," Jasper muttered.

"Who cares?" Rosalie whined and pulled Emmett along faster.

Edward began glaring at me. My face had given me away. He knew.

"What have you done?" he growled under his breath. Alice and Jasper turned to look at him. Alice raised one manicured eyebrow at him and Jasper shook his head.

"He'll be fine," the blond whispered and ushered Alice along. She looked over her shoulder at Edward. He didn't see her worried expression because he was too busy staring at me.

"You're worrying them, again," I said, trying to deflect his attention away from me.

"I can hear that on my own, thank you. I don't need your assessment of the situation." His eyes continued to bore into mine. "Now, stop trying to distract me."

"I'm not …" Denial was pointless.

"What have you done and how?" he growled again. A few passing students who had been staring at him jumped and scurried away. Edward was completely unaffected.

"Me? _I_ haven't done anything," I lied.

"Don't. Lie. To. Me." Edward drew the attention of a few more students.

"Is this really where you want to talk about this?" I asked. I had to stay calm because he most certainly wasn't, and if I didn't keep a handle on my emotions then he would always have the upper hand. In addition, I didn't harbor a deep resounding hatred for all of the Cullens – just Edward, and if he happened to do something phenomenally stupid that would affect all of them.

At that moment, he looked like he was about to do something really, really stupid. He was looking less and less human. It was actually pretty frightening. I separated myself from the situation as much as possible.

_He can't hurt me. I'm already dead._

"Edward, think of your family. You're drawing a lot of attention to yourself and I'm not the one who's going to suffer. It'll be them," I said calmly.

"Don't you even begin to tell me about my family." He stalked toward me and I took a few steps back. There were hardly any people left on the path between the parking lot and the school but there were still too many witnesses for him to behave like this.

"You're going to expose yourself," I said a little more desperately.

"Fine, let's go." He turned on his heel and marched to the car. I stood on the sidewalk with my mouth agape.

'NOW!' he mouthed and pointed at the car violently.

I bravely raised an eyebrow and glided to the car.

"I'm only coming along because I have no desire to dragged along twenty yards behind the car," I snapped and slid through the car door into the passenger seat.

"We're going to talk about this whether you want to or not." He started the car and pealed out of the parking lot.

"Whatever."

"You forget, I'm a vampire, I can wait." He took off out of the lot and drove.

He took the one-oh-one out of town at a blinding speed, turned right onto the one-ten and came to a stop at the end of the road. It ended at a trail-head but he made no attempt to get out of the car. Instead, he watched me. I clasped my hands together and tried not to look at him.

"I'm going to sit here and wait until you have something to say for yourself," he tapped his fingers on the gearshift.

"There's really no excuse for what I did. I was angry," I explained.

"What you did to me makes perfect sense," he whispered, "but those girls are innocent and toying with them like that was inexcusable."

"I didn't …" Who was I kidding? "It was childish," I admitted. "I found them in the bathroom after I ran from you yesterday morning and they were so cruel." Tears welled up in my eyes. Could a ghost cry? My question was answered by something very cold sliding down my cheek and evaporating as it dripped off my chin.

Edward leaned back in his seat and sighed. His fingers pulled on his hair, and he looked at the roof.

"You can't hold the things that people say and think in private against them." He didn't look at me. "People say and think things that they would never act on or say in public. What you saw between those girls was a private moment. You shouldn't have listened."

"But they were talking about me, Edward," I sobbed. "She called me a 'ho' and said that Forks would be better off without one more girl chasing after you."

"It was jealousy, Bella," he confided softly. "Both of those girls have terribly fragile self esteem. They were tearing you down because you're the only person I've ever shown interest in …"

"What?"

"They wanted to tear you down because I wanted you," he said.

"You wanted me?" I looked up at him.

"More than anything." He pulled his eyes away from the ceiling and turned his face toward me. "I don't know how many times I have to say that I'm sorry, but I am. I'll say it until you hear it, every hour of every day if I have to. You have to believe that killing you is the greatest sin I have ever committed."

"You're a vampire," I whispered.

"And you're the only innocent life I've ever taken." He breathing grew shaky. "I had a difficult vampire adolescence. I left Carlisle and Esme for a while … tried doing things the regular way, the easy way … I fed from humans," he admitted. "I used my mind reading ability to act as judge, jury, and executioner. I weeded out the guilty by their thoughts."

"But you only killed bad people …"

"No, Bella, the point is, who am I to judge who's unworthy to live," he sighed. "I'm not God, only he has that right. It's not my place. You can't judge someone's character by a snippet of thought, or even by following him for the day. People say and do and think things all the time that aren't indicative of their overall character."

"But you can tell by their thoughts, you probably saved thousands of lives …"

"It wasn't right, Bella. Just like it's not right for you to take what those girls said in private and judge their character based solely on that. Vigilante justice is always wrong," he said.

I hated to admit it, but being chastised by him was one of the most emotionally painful experiences I'd ever had. Tears were still streaming down my face.

"We all make mistakes," he said. "We all have the opportunity to move on and do better."

"I was never like this before," I cried.

"I'm so sorry." He opened his door and stepped out of the car. He sped around and opened my door in a flash. "Come on, I want to show you something."

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**End Note:**

**I'm off to the woods for a week. So, don't get upset if I don't reply to reviews immediately. **

**I have a blog these days. When there's bonus stuff I put it on there. katsfics(dot)blogspot(dot)com**

**The Obsession Contest is in full swing. I wrote a little Stalkerella to go with it, she scares me. Here's the contest: www(dot)fanfiction(dot)net/u/2337304/Obsession_Contest**


	7. Chapter 7 The Meadow

A/n

**Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer. This sick, twisted plotline is all me.**

**Thanks to KnittingVamp7 for beta'ing!**

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The woods were thick and dark. Edward's skin was so white that it nearly glowed under the canopy of trees. He walked slowly at first, but stopped several yards up the trail. He turned and looked at me.

"Do you want to run with me again?" he asked with a boyish grin on his face.

"I more glide than run," I said.

"But do you want to?" he asked again.

"You really like it, don't you?"

"Yes, it's one of the few things that I enjoy about being what I am," he said. He was still smiling. "The speed is exhilarating; it takes my mind off of other things."

"Then by all means, you run and I'll fly," I said.

His grin became impossibly broader; he looked like a boy. I couldn't help but smile back. He turned and began running.

It only took a moment for him to run far enough ahead that the edge of my boundary caught me. I sensed it approaching and jumped in order to propel myself into the air. I flew through branches and leaves. A tingle passed through me as I passed through the canopy. I couldn't see Edward through the dense foliage but I knew that he was still moving.

My flight didn't last long. Edward stopped on the edge of what looked like a clearing ahead. I flew over him and landed in the middle of a meadow. I glanced at him and found my own smile echoed in his. The tall grass and flowers tickled my legs just as the trees had done. I spun around a bit, before noticing that Edward was still standing under the cover of the trees.

I held out my hand to encourage him to walk forward and noticed that I could barely see myself in the sunlight. I wondered if he could see me. What little color my skin had possessed in life seemed to be completely washed out by the sun.

"Can you see me?" I asked.

"Of course," he said. "My vision is much better than yours."

I had forgotten for a brief moment that he was a vampire.

"What happens if you come out in the sunlight?" I asked. I noticed a cloud moving swiftly to cover the sun. Sunshine was a limited commodity in Forks.

"Do you want me to show you?" he asked.

"It depends, will it hurt you?"

"No," he laughed, and stepped away from the trees. The sunlight glinted off of his skin and reflected back in prisms. My mouth hung open as I openly gawked at him. I didn't understand the expression that came over his face.

"You're beautiful," I whispered in awe.

"No, Bella. You're beautiful. I'm a monster." Instantly his face made sense: he was disgusted. The clouds once again obscured the sun, and Edward visibly relaxed.

"Me? I am plain, and boring, and pale as a sheet despite the fact that I came from Phoenix earlier this week, and now I'm more than just a little transparent. You, on the other hand, are obviously the descendant of a Greek god, and your skin sparkles like diamonds in the sunshine."

"It's just camouflage to draw you in, to bring you closer so that …"

"So that you can …"

"Yeah …"

Neither of us wanted to say it.

"It's actually quite superfluous, really," he stated. "We're fast, and unbelievably strong, and venomous. Beauty really shouldn't matter under those circumstances."

"Venomous?" I asked.

"Yes, had I pulled back when I meant to, then you would understand that better." He sighed and adjusted his stance. "We secrete venom, it replaces all of our saliva and blood."

"So … I would have died anyway?"

"No." He shook his head. "The venom would have changed you into one of us. It would have immobilized you by causing excruciating pain first, but then it would have converted all of your blood, changed your body, and made it unnaturally perfect …" he trailed off.

"You would have hurt me either way," I whispered.

"Yes, but it would have been the last time I hurt you, unlike this. My mere presence seems to cause constant pain."

"As does mine."

"But you're not the one to blame," he said. "I have no right to feel pain over what I've done. I should never have tried."

"I think that you meant well." Why exactly was I assuaging his guilt?

"I did, but that's no excuse," he protested. "I made a choice and took something that wasn't mine."

"I'm pretty sure that in that moment, I would have given it to you freely," I confessed. "I told you that I was yours."

"You didn't know what that meant." He was standing unnaturally still, unblinking, unmoving.

"True."

"See, and this is my punishment." He looked at me. "I have to be near you every day, every hour, and I can't escape. You're like a personification of my guilt – all of my sins thrown in my face everyday just by being near the ghost of the innocent life that I took." He stepped closer and passed his hand over the edge of where my cheek should have been. His fingers barely passed under what would have been skin.

"I wanted, and I took, and I drank what was forbidden. There is no forgiveness for me." I could feel his heart aching. It was like his pain was a part of me. It was too intense and I silently begged for it to stop.

"Whatever happened to, 'We all make mistakes'?" I asked. It seemed that he subscribed to a double standard on this issue. "You said, 'we' earlier, but now it sounds like you didn't mean that. Don't you believe that you have the opportunity to be forgiven and do better?"

"I'm a vampire, Bella. Forgiveness is kind of a moot point when you're damned." He shrugged and shifted his stance.

"You said 'we,' which indicates to me that at least somewhere – deep down – you think that you have a chance." I smirked at him. "If you think that there's the remotest possibility for redemption, then shouldn't you do better?"

"Are you attempting to apply Pascal's Wager to this situation?" he teased and smirked.

"I might be working up to that, yes." I smiled sweetly.

"Why they put _that_ in mainstream high school curriculum but somehow can't manage to teach you children how to balance a checkbook is appalling."

"So… Pascal…" I started.

"I never said that I didn't believe in God, Bella. Actually, quite the opposite," he mused. He was challenging me.

"I think that you can apply the same reasoning to your situation," I said.

"It doesn't apply," he said and stared at me darkly.

"Keep staring vampire, I'll tell you when it deters me. I'm dead, what're you going to do, annoy me? You're already doing that," I folded my arms under my chest. We were mirroring each other. "Believing in some form of redemption benefits you infinitely more than believing that you're automatically damned."

"I can't decide whether I love you or hate you," he mused.

"That's not the topic at hand," I snapped.

He raised an eyebrow at me, and I stared him down.

"I really think that you could use some hope in your life," I said.

"I'm not alive," he huffed.

"Neither am I," I imitated his childish tone and flounced onto the ground for good measure. He came and laid down next to me. We weren't touching, just laying close enough that I could sense his body.

I felt the grass and realized that it was kind of soothing. It was almost like a being, all of the blades in the meadow were linked together through their root system. It gave off a sense of peace and harmony. I let it course through me.

"I like it here," I whispered.

"Me too," Edward responded in a velvety tone. He sounded almost sleepy. "Sometimes I come here to get away," he confessed. "Hearing everyone's thoughts all the time can be stressful, and sometimes I need to escape from them. No one is ever out here. It's the one place where I have complete silence."

"I can't even imagine."

He turned, propped himself up on his elbow and looked at me.

"I've always had quiet. I'm an only child with no real friends to speak of … No one ever bothers me. Sometimes it's like being a ghost hasn't changed anything. In a few weeks I would have blended into the background and they all would have ignored me anyway." I could feel tears welling up again.

"Don't cry," he tried to soothe me. The tears came anyway. It was sad to acknowledge the insignificance of my existence. I tried to stop, to turn them off and choke them back down but the sheer weight of my revelation was too painful. It crushed me into the ground. I could feel it echo through the grass and in turn the green surface below me fought against it. The grass wanted to be happy. It was like the roots throughout the meadow were banding together to support one another through my grief, drawing comfort from the far corners near the trees.

"If I hadn't been responsible for your death, I still never would have forgotten your life," Edward said. He was somber. Once again, he reached out to touch me and stopped himself. "I lo-"

"Please don't," I sobbed. Those were words that I couldn't hear. He couldn't speak them to me; it would have been too cruel at the time.

"I'm sorry." He rolled back onto his back and shifted away to give me some space.

I lay there for a very long time and stared at the expanse of gray clouds covering the sky. The clouds were forlorn looking, depressed, and completely unremarkable … like me. The sky slowly darkened from light gray to a subtly darker tone. The change was gradual. Every once in a while I held up my hand and watched it become a bit more solid looking.

"Edward?" I called.

"Yes."

"Can we please try to find someone who may know about ghosts?" I asked.

"Bella, we've been over this …"

"Please?" I tried again.

"I just don't want you to get your hopes up only to be crushed by some charlatan," he sighed.

"I promise not to get my hopes up. We'll test people thoroughly before even talking to them," I whined.

"It's not a good idea and that's final."

I hated that I couldn't do anything with out him. Or could I? Perhaps if I could get one of the other Cullens alone, or one of the kids at school in the computer lab, then I could search on the Internet. It wasn't likely that I'd find anything, but I could try. It was better than nothing.

"What are you planning?" Edward was studying me. "I know that you're up to something. There's too much going on behind your eyes."

"I'm not planning anything," I sighed.

"Don't lie to me," he growled and leaned forward.

"I'm not afraid of you." I rolled away from him and got to my feet. "We should probably go. We've spent the day here and you family will be wanting the car."

"Fine, but I'm watching you." He pouted and stood. I followed him as he huffed out of the clearing and under the cover of the trees. He began to run again, and I allowed myself to be pulled along. The trip seemed shorter, like he was running more for speed than fun.

We didn't talk on the way back. I sat in the backseat with my knees pulled up to my chest, looking out the window and planning. I just had to get one of them alone. How exactly was I going to do that? The last thing I needed was for Edward to notice that I could possess his family.

Actually, I wasn't sure if that worked with everyone. Humans seemed to react differently. Could Esme have been an anomaly? I really needed to try that out on another vampire to test it out. I wondered how long I'd have to wait to get to Alice or Rosalie without anyone interfering.

"We're here," Edward murmured from the front seat. I blinked and saw the campus of Forks High School come into focus, bathed in the hazy gray afternoon light that sifted through the clouds. We'd spent a lot of time quietly together. I hated to admit it, but Edward was fairly comfortable to be around when we weren't arguing. I really needed to hate him more, because liking the guy who murdered me was just sick and wrong.

"Bella," he prompted.

"Yeah, I heard you," I said and moved out of the car just in time for his siblings to waltz our way through the throng of students eagerly heading for the parking lot. They all walked and dressed like runway models, it was a wonder that no one in town had figured out their little secret due to the fact that they were just so odd. I could see the camouflage now that I knew what to look for. They were all a bit too perfect, the student body seemed both fascinated and frightened by them. It was apparent by the way they watched the vampires but also parted around them, leaving enough room to feel safe.

I saw Jessica and Lauren exit the school. They seemed a bit stiff but were still walking together. It didn't seem like I'd done any permanent damage to their friendship. Tyler walked a little too closely to them for a moment, and I saw Lauren jump. That was certainly interesting.

"So, that was discreet," a voice chirped close to me, as the door to the car creaked open.

"I needed to leave, okay?" Edward responded.

"Alice," Jasper warned the smallest vampire.

"Fine, but next time try not to seem completely insane before you peel out of the parking lot. It was entirely too conspicuous," Alice continued.

"What do you want me to do, Alice? Forget her?" Edward spat. I turned to look over my shoulder at him. He was still sitting behind the steering wheel, but now his shoulders were hunched. "I can't."

"You're just going to have to get over that." Rosalie folded herself into the car. I wondered how she did that. If I were as tall as she was, getting into the car would have been a much less graceful affair. "Everyone here, other than me, has made mistakes …"

"You are just as much a murderer as I am, Rosalie Hale," Edward said frostily. His eyes met hers in the rear view mirror. I could sense the tension from outside the car. Jasper was tense. He hadn't gotten in yet, and was shifting from foot to foot outside.

"Ya know, Edward, at least you tried not to kill her," Emmett said, suddenly appearing in the front passenger seat. "There have been times when I didn't even think twice about sinking my teeth into some poor, unsuspecting human."

"Please don't show me," Edward growled in response and turned the key in the ignition.

Jasper finally slipped into the car and we were driving back to the house. Oddly, it almost felt like home when we pulled up. I pushed that thought to the back of my mind. I did not need to form any more attachments to the vampires. It was bad enough that I had slipped into liking Edward rather than hating him.

Everyone filed into the house quietly. It seemed that no one wanted to discuss their potentially insane brother any further. Although, things seemed a bit different, the day before they had all been content to allow Edward to stew on his own. Suddenly, there was always another one of them with him.

First it was Alice and a seemingly futile chess game. I watched for a while, fascinated by the fact that she was seeing the future and he was reading her mind. It took fifteen minutes per move and finally ended with him tipping over his own King when none of her pieces were near it. They set up the board and did it again.

I used the opportunity to search for an unaccompanied vampire elsewhere in the house. I wasn't lucky. Jasper was in the same room with Edward and Alice, reading a book and sporadically glancing at the game. Rosalie and Emmett were… occupied. There were noises and I really didn't want to investigate further. Esme and Carlisle were discussing something in the kitchen. It sounded like they might have been talking about how to handle Edward and it seemed that he wouldn't be getting any time alone in the near future.

My search had been futile. I didn't want Edward to figure out the full extent of my ability, nor did I want to reveal myself openly to the others just yet. I wasn't sure if they'd put the facts together and come up with the solution that I was real or not. Perhaps they would just think that they'd all ingested some bad elk or something.

I would have to wait for an opportunity at school. I sighed and settled in to observe the Cullen household from the top of Edward's piano. He eyed me occasionally throughout the night. It would be so much easier if I could convince him to search for help. I lay down on the black surface and let my mind wander until morning. There just had to be a way to change the mind of a stubborn vampire.

* * *

**End note:**

**The blog has been updated. There's a preview of Viewer 2-5-8, which is a story that I'll be coming out with in another month or two. It's something that I started writing a long time ago but as it turns out it translates beautifully to Twi-fic. drs, of Operation LOVEs Recovery has graciously volunteered to beta and has already been hard at work.  
**

**Manuel the Wonder Llama/Doc has gone ahead with his CivilWarSper fic, "The Home Guard." It's a little dose of history with your Twi-fic, worth checking out. He's as bad as I am about making sure that things are thoroughly researched.**

**Check out the Plot Bunny Contest, LadyRip is doing one set on Tybee Island GA titled, A Ray in the Dark. I've been checking facts for her for about a week. **

**SMILE!**


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